EF2 Tornado — Upshur, Texas

2022-03-21 · near Mings Chapel, Upshur, Texas

Event narrative

An EF-2 tornado touched down off of FM 2685 and Pomegranate Road where it began to sporadically uproot hardwood and softwood trees. The tornado began to intensify and develop a widespread damage swath of uprooted and snapped trees as it approached Highway 271 several miles south of Gilmer. Prior to reaching Highway 271, the tornado ripped the roof off of a single family home and tore down a wall of the home. As the tornado continued on, it reached its maximum width of 700 yards or 0.4 miles as it crossed Highway 700. The tornado intensified further as it crossed Azalea Road and Highway 154. Just before reaching this road, the tornado hit a two-story single family home, removing the home's second floor and tearing down a front exterior wall. This led to the tornado's estimated maximum wind speed of 135 mph, the strongest EF-2 rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. A nearby mobile home was also destroyed, with an occupant injured.

The tornado continued to track northeast and ripped off a roof of a single family home, and completely destroyed one double-wide and multiple single-wide manufactured homes. The tornado also led to structural damage to several two-story family homes with portions of the roofs removed and a projectile leading to a large hole in the side of a home. A guest house that had a frame nailed into the ground was wiped clean from its foundation with its occupant hospitalized.

As the tornado continued to track northeast, it led to more structural damage to single family homes and complete destruction to manufactured homes between Gilmer and Ore City. On at least three occasions, manufactured homes had residents inside of them when they were picked up and thrown by the tornado. Additional widespread tree and roof damage to homes continued as the tornado approached Lake O' the Pines. Before crossing the lake into Western Marion County, the tornado ripped the roof off of the Lake O' the Pines Bait Shop before throwing multiple RV's and a motor home into the lake. Four occupants in these RV's were injured but were rescued from the lake.

Wider weather episode

A closed upper low emerged out of the Rockies and into the Central Plains during the afternoon and evening hours of March 21st, with the attendant upper trough swinging east through Central Texas and Oklahoma. Strong southerly low level winds allowed for the rapid return of warm, moist, and unstable north behind a warm front which lifted north through East Texas and North Louisiana. Large scale forcing began to increase across Northern and Central Texas during the evening, with showers and thunderstorms becoming numerous across this area which spread into East Texas and North Louisiana during the late evening through the early morning hours of the 22nd. Given the extent of forcing within the unstable air mass in place, severe thunderstorms developed over North-central Texas and spread into East Texas, resulting in numerous reports of damaging winds, large hail, and even isolated tornadoes. Redevelopment of these storms continued overnight as well over the same areas of East Texas and Northwest Louisiana, which resulted in instances of flash flooding as well, as widespread rainfall amounts of 3-6 inches fell over these areas. These storms diminished during the early morning hours of the 22nd with the passage of a cold front through the region.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.6428, -94.9660)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1009234. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.