Unrated tornado, Santa Rosa Lake Dam, Texas, March 24, 2024

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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

March 24, 2024

Touchdown

5:27 PM CDT (22:27 UTC)

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Wilbarger County

Touchdown point

33.854, -99.211

Lift-off point

33.854, -99.211

Record number

2403241627-01

A powerful upper wave impacted the Southern Great Plains during the afternoon/evening of the 24th. Despite a synoptic pattern favoring organized and potentially widespread severe weather outcomes, mass return ahead of this system was paltry (low to mid-50s surface dewpoints by the mid-evening) owing to prior (highly modified) frontal intrusions across the Gulf of Mexico. Still, with marginally sufficient instability and strong wind shear, a few organized storms emerged off of a dryline across western Oklahoma into western-north Texas. The most significant (supercell) thunderstorm moved across the Red River Valley producing reports of large hail and the first tornado of 2024 across the WFO Norman area.

Numerous storm chasers observed a brief tornado in southern Wilbarger County estimated to be about 2 miles west of US-183/283 and a mile or two north of the Baylor County line. No damage is known to have occurred.

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 19:49 UTC and running to 01:34 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 19:49 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.

The Altus AFB radar (KFDR), 60 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:28 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 2024 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

7 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.