EF0 tornado, Carterville, Texas, April 5, 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 5, 2023

Touchdown

8:44 AM CDT (13:44 UTC)

Lifted

8:45 AM CDT (13:45 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Cass County

Touchdown point

33.012, -94.444

Lift-off point

33.012, -94.441

Record number

2304050744-01

7 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 90 mph.

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

An upper low pressure system over the Four Corners Region ejected northeast through the Southern Rockies into the Central Plains by the afternoon of April 5th, which reinforced a cold front southeast into East Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and North Louisiana before stalling out late in the day. Large scale ascent increased along and ahead of the front and the ejecting upper low, which had tapped into a warm and moderately unstable air mass that had pooled north from the Gulf of Mexico ahead of the front. This resulted in numerous shower and thunderstorm development during the morning around and after daybreak over Northeast Texas and Southwest Arkansas, which eventually moved into portions of extreme Northwest Louisiana by late morning/early afternoon. Some of these storms became severe, with damaging winds observed and even an isolated tornado briefly touching down just west of Linden in Cass County Texas. While these storms eventually weakened by mid-afternoon, additional redevelopment occurred along the slowing front farther south of I-20 in East Texas by late afternoon and early evening as they tapped stronger instability, with isolated severe thunderstorms producing large hail affecting portions of Cherokee and Panola Counties before moving into extreme Northwest Louisiana.

A NWS Storm Survey concluded that a brief EF-0 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 85 mph briefly touched down along Farm Road 130, where it uprooted approximately 10 trees in a convergent pattern while also downing several small and large tree limbs.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 13:41 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 14:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 09:59 UTC and running to 15:07 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 12:55 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.

Atlanta (ATA), 25 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 84 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 13:43 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

17 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.