EF1 tornado, Appleby to Holly Spgs, Texas, March 2, 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

March 2, 2023

Touchdown

10:51 PM CST (04:51 UTC)

Lifted

10:58 PM CST (04:58 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

3.1 miles (5.0 km)

Path width

1,000 yards (914 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Nacogdoches County

Touchdown point

31.723, -94.640

Lift-off point

31.740, -94.591

Record number

2303022251-01

12 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 100 mph.

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

A potent upper-level trough progressed from the Four-Corners Region into the Texas Panhandle by late in the afternoon on March 2nd. Strong warm and moist air advection was ongoing in advance of the trough earlier in the morning. This resulted in scattered convection, but this had little effect on increasing instability through the afternoon as temperatures warmed into the mid and upper 70s to lower and mid 80s. Additionally, backing surface winds also promoted increasing low-level shear as well as deep-layer shear with a 50-60 knot low-level jet surging east ahead of the trough and advancing cold front. This environment was supportive of several supercells that developed by late afternoon into the early evening hours, producing several tornadoes in addition to large hail and damaging wind gusts. As the cold front surged east of I-35 by early in the evening, the storm mode eventually became more linear with an increasing threat of more widespread damaging winds along the complex of storms while the threats of large hail and isolated tornadoes continued through the end of the event.

An EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 100 mph touched down about 8 miles to the north northeast of Nacogdoches near the Appleby community. Damage to trees was seen along FM Road 2864 along and north of County Road 106 where large trees were either uprooted or snapped at their trunks. From there, the tornado tracked to the northeast where additional damage was found near County Road 125 and County Road 127 just north of US Highway 59. The tornado caused some additional tree damage off Hidden Valley Drive just to the south and east of US Highway 59 before lifting shortly thereafter.

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

17 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 04:34 UTC, 17 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 05:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 01:56 UTC and running to 05:52 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 01:00 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.

Nacogdoches (Awos) (OCH), 19 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 108 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:51 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

10 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.