EF0 tornado, Tyler, Texas, April 20, 2023

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

April 20, 2023

Touchdown

7:05 PM CDT (00:05 UTC)

Lifted

7:08 PM CDT (00:08 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

65 yards (59 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Smith County

Touchdown point

32.334, -95.290

Lift-off point

32.344, -95.288

Record number

2304201805-01

8 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• Large canopy on the front entrance of the funeral home was blown west into the nearby hardwoods where snaps are observed.
• Glass above front canopy roof popped off and shattered in front of the medical building.
• Hardwood uprooted, but surrounding area was already bulldozed, compromising the root structure of the tree. Very little debris noted nearby.

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

An upper level low pressure system shifted east from Montana east into the Dakotas on April 20th, with the attendant trough extending southward through the Rockies before ejecting east through the Central and Southern Plains during the afternoon and evening. A strong southerly low level flow ahead of this trough ushered very warm and humid air back north into the Four State Region on the 19th-20th, which primed the area with moderate instability ahead of an associated cold front that entered the region during the afternoon. Large scale forcing increased by mid and late afternoon through the evening along and ahead of the front and upper trough within the warm, moist, and unstable sector, enhancing scattered to numerous shower and thunderstorm development across portions of East Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, and Southwest Arkansas. Multiple reports of damaging winds and large hail were observed, with an isolated tornado also touching down in Midtown Tyler in Smith County. Localized flash flooding was also reported on the Texas side of Texarkana before the storms weakened during the evening with the loss of heating and reduced instability.

A NWS Storm Survey and local area spotter videos confirmed a slow moving but weak EF-0 tornado with maximum estimated winds near 80 mph touched down in the Midtown area of Tyler. The tornado initially touched down near Lloyd James Funeral Home near the intersection of East 1st Street and South Fleishel Avenue, where numerous large and small limbs were snapped off of nearby trees with a few shingles torn off of the roof of the funeral home. In addition, a large canopy on the front entrance of the funeral home was torn off and thrown into a nearby tree. The tornado then moved just northeast of the UT Health Tyler Campus, where it crossed East Idel Street, and peeled off a portions of a metal roof from a nearby medical building. A glass canopy was partially lifted up and shattered in front of the medical building, and a nearby hardwood tree had several limbs that were snapped. The tornado continued northeast along South Fleishel Avenue, where it uprooted a hardwood tree which damaged the corner of a nearby single family home at the end of Woodley Street, and also snapped large limbs off of a softwood tree on East Houston Street before lifting.

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

25 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:40 UTC, 25 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 18:52 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:31 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.

Tyler/Pounds Field (TYR), 11 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 136 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:02 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 2023 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

3 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.