EF2 tornado, Antioch to Springdale, Texas, June 14, 2023

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

June 14, 2023

Touchdown

12:43 PM CDT (17:43 UTC)

Lifted

12:54 PM CDT (17:54 UTC)

On the ground

11 minutes

Path length

8.9 miles (14.4 km)

Path width

500 yards (457 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$2.0 million

County

Cass County

Touchdown point

33.244, -94.216

Lift-off point

33.197, -94.072

Record number

2306141143-01

29 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 120 mph.

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

Supercell thunderstorms developed toward midday across the middle Red River Valley along and south of a stalled frontal boundary. These thunderstorms progressed east southeast with upper 80s temperatures on the warm side of the boundary with dew points exceeding 75 degrees. Mid-level lapse rates of 7-8 C/km overspread this very moist low-level air mass over a rather broad west-to-east corridor, supporting extreme instability upwards of 4500 J/kg well downstream of the upscale-growing convection. Coinciding this corridor of extreme buoyancy was very strong effective bulk shear near 65 kts along with hodographs that were modestly curved at the low levels and elongated above 3 km AGL. Numerous local storm reports were documented of large hail, damaging wind gusts, and an isolated tornado across parts of East and Northeast Texas throughout the event.

An EF-2 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 120 mph initially produced damage along the shore of Wright Patman Lake. It snapped and uprooted hundreds of hardwood and softwood trees along its path, first crossing CR-3555. After it crossed CR-3555, it peeled part of a roof off of a single family home. The tornado continued to snap and uproot trees as it paralleled CR-3555 and crossed CR-3551 and CR-3554. The tornado strengthened to EF-2 intensity as it crossed CR-3659 and produced more widespread snapping of trees. As the tornado continued on, its most intense damage was at a two-story industrial facility along US-59. The tornado tore off the roof and damaged walls of the facility, bending and breaking parts of metal frame of its roof structure. ||After crossing US-59 and tossing vehicles, the tornado snapped more trees on the other side of the road. The tornado weakened some with more uprooting and sporadic tree snaps as it crossed FM-2327, CR-3781, CR-3778, FM-3129, and CR-3886. It finally lifted as it crossed CR-3889 as damage transitioned to all straight-line wind damage with winds estimated at 80 to 90 mph as the storm continued to the border of Cass County, Texas and Miller County, Arkansas.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 13:58 UTC and running to 21:00 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 16:26 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), 14 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 90 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:44 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

11 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.