EF0 tornado, Pantex, Texas, May 18, 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

May 18, 2023

Touchdown

10:02 PM CDT (03:02 UTC)

Lifted

10:03 PM CDT (03:03 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.1 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$20,000

County

Carson County

Touchdown point

35.279, -101.541

Lift-off point

35.279, -101.540

Record number

2305182102-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS AMA, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 90 mph.

• Garage collapsed. Dumpster thrown back to the southwest into field. Tree limb debris. Some roof damage to the garage and house roof.

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

During the afternoon of the 18th, quite a bit of moisture and unstable air was present across the combined Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle. During the heat of the day several supercell thunderstorms created large hail, up to 2.5 in diameter, heavy rain, and damaging wind gusts. One of the supercells even produced a short lived tornado. Continued storm activity into the overnight hours from the help of an upper level system continued to feed the overall rain amounts leading to widespread flooding problems across the area.

A brief tornado touched down just to the east of FM2373. It|caused some broken tree limbs and tossed a dumpster several yards|back to the south. It resulted in damage to an attached garage,|collapsing the structure. It also blew some horse trailers over|in a nearby field. The tornado lifted in an empty field.

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

36 minutes of warning. NWS AMA issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:26 UTC, 36 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 03:09 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 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.

Amarillo - Rick Husband Intl (AMA), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Amarillo radar (KAMA), 16 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:58 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

1 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.