Tornadoes · United States · Texas · 2025
Unrated tornado, Amistad Res East, Texas, August 19, 2025
This Unrated tornado ran 0.0 miles across Val Verde County on August 19, 2025, touching down at 3:15 PM CDT and reaching 1 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- Unrated
- Date
- August 19, 2025
- Touchdown
- 3:15 PM CDT (20:15 UTC)
- Lifted
- 3:20 PM CDT (20:20 UTC)
- On the ground
- 5 minutes
- Path length
- 0.0 miles (0.0 km)
- Path width
- 1 yards (1 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Val Verde County
- Touchdown point
- 29.500, -100.880
- Lift-off point
- 29.500, -100.880
- Record number
- 2508191415-01
What the Weather Service recorded
A retreating mid to upper-level high allowed convection to develop with strong daytime heating in a moist airmass. Some of these storms produced damaging wind gusts and one tornado.
Video confirmed a landspout formed under a developing shower close to the east end of Amistad Reservoir, north of Loop 79. The landspout appears to have remained over open country with no damage reported. With no apparent damage, we could not determine a path length or width.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:47 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 air that afternoon
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.
Del Rio, TX (KDRT), 12:00Z
8.3 hours before the tornado, 15 km from the path. August 19, 2025.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1827 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -105 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1415 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1268 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 23 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 12 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -43 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 32 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.0 K/km
The radar
The Laughlin AFB radar (KDFX), 63 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:13 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20:20 UTC | TORNADO | 5 Ne Lake View | Val Verde, TX | Video confirmed a landspout formed under a developing shower close to the east end of Amistad Reservoir, north of Loop 79. The landspout appears to have remained over open country with no damage reported. |
| 20:45 UTC | TSTM WND GST 51 | 6 N Rough Canyon Recrea | Val Verde, TX | Mesonet station TW115 Devils River Dah. |
| 21:22 UTC | TSTM WND GST 50 | 8 Wsw Rough Canyon Recr | Val Verde, TX | Mesonet station UR131 8.2 W Rough Canyon Recreation Area (UPR). |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2025 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of August 19, 2025
1 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 19 | 3:35 PM MDT | Unrated | Sandoval, NM | 0.7 | 40 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.