EF3 tornado, Bassett to Daniels Chapel, Texas, November 4, 2022

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF3

Date

November 4, 2022

Touchdown

7:17 PM CDT (00:17 UTC)

Lifted

7:38 PM CDT (00:38 UTC)

On the ground

21 minutes

Path length

15.7 miles (25.2 km)

Path width

800 yards (732 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$7.0 million

County

Bowie County

Touchdown point

33.316, -94.563

Lift-off point

33.506, -94.414

Record number

2211041817-01

139 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 140 mph.

• Carried or rolled trailer and container 50 feet
• Home appears well built. People inside, 0 injuries.
• Destroyed well built horse barn
• Shifted off foundation by several feet. Tree falling on home could have prevented being blown away. A few people inside had to be cut out, but we’re not injured.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A strong upper level trough progressed through the Rockies and into the Central and Southern Plains during the day on November 4th, enhancing strong surface low development over the Upper Red River Valley into Oklahoma. This produced a strong pressure gradient over the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley, allowing for very rich Gulf moisture to surge north across the Ark-La-Tex area into Eastern Oklahoma and much of Arkansas. This generated moderate instability across these areas during the afternoon, as temperatures rose into the lower to mid 80s. Very strong wind shear was also in place over these areas, with the upper trough reinforcing a cold front southeast into Southeast Oklahoma, Western Arkansas, and East Texas. This trough enhanced large scale forcing along the front, with discrete supercell development also occurring ahead of the main line of storms over portions of East Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, and Southwest Arkansas. Multiple tornadoes, some strong, touched down across these areas, with additional instances of damaging winds also reported before the line of storms overtook these discrete supercells and shifted east across the remainder of East Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and into North Louisiana during the evening and overnight hours.

The supercell thunderstorm which produced a second tornado ending in northwestern Cass County continued on to the northeast and produced another tornado just north of the Sulphur River in southwestern Bowie County. This tornado was determined to be the strongest one produced by this particular thunderstorm and generated a few spots of low end EF-3 damage in several locations along its nearly 16-mile long path, with estimated maximum winds near 140 mph. This tornado first touched down along U.S. Highway 67 to the southwest of Simms and quickly grew in strength and width after tracking a few miles, briefing reaching a width of nearly a half mile at times. Just west of Simms and continuing northeast just past FM-561, the tornado produced many instances of EF-2 damage to both trees and structures. As the tornado crossed FM-561, there were several structures, a few well built, which had roofs and many walls removed, with 140 mph winds estimated here which were just inside the EF-3 threshold. Additionally, near this structural damage, there was a small section of asphalt road removed from FM-561 and the road debris was thrown into one residence. From there, the tornado then tracked northeast nearly four miles through very rural and uninhabited areas west of Texas Highway 98. The tornado finally moved back over Highway 98 and produced another area of considerable damage at the intersection of Highway 98 and CR-1840. In this area, several structures were largely destroyed, including a few small retail buildings, and this again garnered some high end EF-2 and low end EF-3 ratings with no injuries. After this point, the tornado travelled its final seven miles by crossing the southwestern, then western, and then northern portions of the city of New Boston, before ending just west of Highway 8 north of Interstate 30. Damage to structures and trees in these areas was mostly EF-1 caliber, although considerable damage to one or two well-built homes on the western side of New Boston did warrant an EF-2 damage rating.

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

26 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:51 UTC, 26 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 22:37 UTC and running to 03:08 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:36 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 Shreveport radar (KSHV), 123 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:16 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

29 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.