EF1 tornado, Hurstown to Shelbyville, Texas, March 28, 2025

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 28, 2025

Touchdown

1:48 PM CDT (18:48 UTC)

Lifted

2:03 PM CDT (19:03 UTC)

On the ground

15 minutes

Path length

5.6 miles (9.1 km)

Path width

472 yards (432 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Shelby County

Touchdown point

31.702, -94.034

Lift-off point

31.783, -94.022

Record number

2503281248-01

14 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.

Numerous showers and thunderstorms developed across the Four State Region on March 28th in response to an upper-level disturbance moving across the Red River Valley of North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. As the afternoon hours progressed, strong southerly flow allowed for temperatures and dew points to rise, creating a more unstable atmosphere with MLCAPE values approaching 1000 J/kg. Thunderstorms started to strengthen in intensity during this period, with modest shear profiles across East Texas, Western Louisiana and adjacent Southwest Arkansas. Rotational signatures were detected in several of the stronger storms through the evening hours. This required the issuance of several tornado warnings across the aforementioned areas. As a result, an EF1 tornado was reported in Shelby County Texas.

An EF1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 95 mph developed during the early afternoon on March 28th, 2025, associated with a mini-supercell and initially began southwest of Shelbyville near the Hurstown community at the intersection of Highway 87 and County Road 2130. At this location, the tornado removed a few metal roof panels from some chicken houses and snapped and uprooted a few trees. The tornado then moved northward snapping and uprooting more trees along County Road 2130. More snapped hardwood and softwood trees were noted as the tornado crossed County Road 2625, County Road 2635, and Farm-to-Market Road 2694. The tornado finally lifted along Forest Service Road 143 just south of Farm-to-Market Road 417. Despite a relatively weak velocity couplet on the KSHV WSR-88D radar, the damage path was well observed in the vicinity of a TDS in the correlation coefficient data.

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 tornado watch, issued at 17:31 UTC and running to 00:35 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, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:22 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.

Center (F17), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 81 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:48 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 2025 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

2 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.