EF2 Tornado — Cherokee, Texas

2022-03-21 · near Alto, Cherokee, Texas

Event narrative

An EF-2 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 125 mph touched down in a field just north of Highway 21 in Southern Cherokee County a couple miles east-northeast of Alto, where it downed large limbs in a convergent pattern. As the tornado crossed Highway 241, it uprooted trees, and damaged two metal outbuildings just off of County Road 2525. The tornado continued to uproot and snap trees in more rural areas unreachable by vehicles, before crossing over into Northwest Nacogdoches County. The damage across Southern Cherokee County was consistent with EF-1 tornado winds up to 100 mph, although the tornado strengthened to an EF-2 shortly after crossing over into Northwest Nacogdoches County.

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 → (31.6591, -95.0306)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1009248. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.