Unrated tornado, Afton, Texas, May 25, 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 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

May 25, 2025

Touchdown

4:53 PM CDT (21:53 UTC)

Lifted

4:54 PM CDT (21:54 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Dickens County

Touchdown point

33.790, -100.683

Lift-off point

33.794, -100.672

Record number

2505251553-01

A short wave trough moving out of northern Mexico into the Southern High Plains brought widespread and intense convection to the South Plains and Rolling Plains of West Texas on the afternoon and evening of the 25th. This short wave trough brought the necessary large scale ascent that was missing the past several days to create the more widespread activity on the 25th. At the same time, a slow moving cold front was moving southward through the southern Texas Panhandle and a dryline was positioned across the central South Plains. Very warm temperatures in the 90s allowed for rapid destabilization of the atmosphere underneath a weak cap. The cap would be overcome early in the afternoon due to the strong heating. A very moist lower atmosphere also allowed for mixed layer instability values to rise in excess of 2500 J/kg. This led to explosive convective development beginning early in the afternoon. Areas across the Rolling Plains saw a majority of the severe weather this day including a hail stone estimated to be six inches in diameter near Afton (Dickens County). Several swaths of up to baseball size hail were observed across the region. The same storm that produced gargantuan hail also produced severe winds destroying several power poles along US Highway 83 north of Guthrie (King County). A brief tornado was also observed over open ranch land in Dickens County with this supercell thunderstorm. A storm merger in southern Motley County brought extremely heavy rainfall near the Roaring Springs Ranch Club near Texas Highway State 70. As a result, rapid runoff allowed water to flow within the South Pease River (Tongue River) in southern Motley County and was reportedly over the road where this river met Texas State Highway 70.

A storm chaser posted a photograph on social media of a brief tornado over open ranch land.

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

30 minutes of warning. NWS LUB issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:23 UTC, 30 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:49 UTC and running to 03:14 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 19:53 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 Lubbock radar (KLBB), 106 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:50 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

8 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.