EF1 tornado, Adams Store to Four Forks, Texas, June 16, 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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

June 16, 2023

Touchdown

1:15 AM CDT (06:15 UTC)

Lifted

1:25 AM CDT (06:25 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

7.7 miles (12.4 km)

Path width

844 yards (772 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

Counties

Panola and Caddo counties

Touchdown point

32.256, -94.074

Lift-off point

32.217, -93.951

Record number

2306160015-01

31 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

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

Late during the evening of June 15th, regional radar analysis showed several clusters of severe thunderstorms ongoing along the middle Red River Valley into Northeast Texas. The eastern-most cluster displayed signs of cold pool intensification and developed a bowing structure. Observational trends farther downstream favored a continued motion along the instability gradient to the southeast through midnight into the early morning hours on June 16th. Given that the background wind fields and buoyancy were still quite strong, the threat of damaging winds upwards of 75+ mph and large hail increased as the complex moved into far Northeast Texas and Northwest Louisiana just after midnight.||Farther west near the Red River, additional storm development occurred along the trailing outflow. Less organized than the eastern cluster, individual storms, including a few supercells, eventually evolved and remained semi-discrete for a few hours. Given the more cellular nature, large hail was a threat initially with the amount of instability upwards of 5000 J/kg and 60 knots of effective shear. A greater risk of damaging winds gradually evolved as storms remained organized and grew upscale overnight.||As a result, large hail up to 2+ inches in diameter eventually occurred in some storms followed by an intense bow echo, resulting in widespread severe winds and even some hurricane-force gusts, setting the stage for initiating a derecho-type event across much of Northeast Texas and North Louisiana. In addition, an isolated tornado also occurred near the Texas/Louisiana state line on the south flank of the extreme derecho winds.

Late during the evening of June 15th, regional radar analysis showed several clusters of severe thunderstorms ongoing along the middle Red River Valley into Northeast Texas. The eastern-most cluster displayed signs of cold pool intensification and developed a bowing structure. Observational trends farther downstream favored a continued motion along the instability gradient to the southeast through midnight into the early morning hours on June 16th. Given the background wind fields and buoyancy were still quite strong, the threat of damaging winds upwards of 75+ mph and large hail increased as the complex moved into far Northeast Texas and Northwest Louisiana just after midnight.||Farther west near the Red River, additional storm development occurred along the trailing outflow. Less organized than the eastern cluster, individual storms, including a few supercells, eventually evolved and remained semi-discrete for a few hours. Given the more cellular nature, large hail was a threat initially with the amount of instability upwards of 5000 J/kg and 60 knots of effective shear. A greater risk of damaging winds gradually evolved as storms remained organized and grew upscale overnight.||As a result, large hail up to 2+ inches in diameter eventually occurred in some storms followed by an intense bow echo, resulting in widespread severe winds and even some hurricane-force gusts, setting the stage for initiating a derecho-type event across much of Northeast Texas and North Louisiana. In addition, an isolated tornado also occurred near the Texas/Louisiana state line on the south flank of the extreme derecho winds.

A strong line of thunderstorms moved through East Texas and Northwest Louisiana during the early morning hours on June 16th. As it moved through East Texas and into the Shreveport metro area, the storm begin to take on a bow shape, indicating that the system would likely produce strong straight line winds. As the storm reached near the Texas/Louisiana state line from Panola County into southwest Caddo Parish, it produced a brief EF-1 tornado with maximum wind gusts of 110 mph, a path width of nearly 850 yards, and path length of nearly two miles in far eastern Panola County. ||With a storm already producing widespread straight-line wind damage, it became difficult to determine what was tornadic and what was straight-line winds. It was determined that the tornado touched down to the west of County Road 322 in Panola County where a large tree fell onto a single family home. The tornado then moved to the southeast across the Texas/Louisiana state line into extreme Southwest Caddo Parish.

A strong line of thunderstorms moved through East Texas and Northwest Louisiana during the early morning hours on June 16th. As it moved through East Texas and into the Shreveport metro area, the storm begin to take on a bow shape, indicating that the system would likely produce strong straight line winds. As the storm reached near the Texas/Louisiana state line from Panola County into southwest Caddo Parish, it produced a brief EF-1 tornado with maximum wind gusts of 110 mph, a path width of nearly 850 yards, and path length of nearly six miles in far southwest Caddo Parish. ||With a storm already producing widespread straight-line wind damage, it became difficult to determine what was tornadic and what was straight-line winds. It was determined that the tornado touched down to the west of County Road 322 in Panola County where a large tree fell onto a single family home. The tornado then moved to the southeast across the Texas/Louisiana state line towards Johns Gin Road where it produced widespread tree damage all along Johns Gin Road north of Keatchie Marshall Road. From there, the tornado moved through a neighborhood to the west of Four |Forks Road just north of Keatchie Marshall Road where a number of trees were either uprooted or snapped. This same area was just struck by a tragic tornado in December 2022. The tornado then tracked to the southeast along Keatchie Marshall Road where damage became more sparse and then lifted just to the west of Preston Road.

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 03:26 UTC and running to 11:00 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:50 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.

Carthage (4F2), 28 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 29 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 06:16 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 2023 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

13 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.