EF0 tornado, Fritch, Texas, May 1, 2022

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

EF0

Date

May 1, 2022

Touchdown

7:55 PM CDT (00:55 UTC)

Lifted

7:56 PM CDT (00:56 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Hutchinson County

Touchdown point

35.636, -101.599

Lift-off point

35.637, -101.599

Record number

2205011855-01

The combined Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles saw an influx of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico on May 1st. This axis of low level moisture followed the Rio Grande before moving north up over west Texas. This created an unstable environment primed for severe thunderstorms from the Midland/Odessa area up through the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. Thunderstorms initiated along the New Mexico/Texas state line and moved east to northeast depending on the nature of the storm. Multiple supercells formed in the late afternoon into evening hours. These supercells had plenty of moisture, instability and increasing winds with height that enabled them to become severe with very large hail and damaging winds which exceeded 80 mph in some cases.

As seen in videos provided, a very short lived landspout occurred in Fritch with location intersection near Palm and Ridgeland. Minor damage occurred, specifically, a few small tree limbs were downed, and there was damage to the metal roof of a barn as well as damage to a small shed that had been lofted into a nearby powerline.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 20:56 UTC and running to 04:00 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:53 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

The Amarillo radar (KAMA), 46 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:53 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2022 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

5 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.