EF2 tornado in Rusk County, Texas

This is a continuation of the Northwest Nacogdoches County EF-2 tornado. The tornado maintained its high end EF-1/low end EF-2 intensity as it moved through Southern and Eastern Rusk County, with estimated maximum winds near 125 mph. Upon departing FM 225 just inside the Southern Rusk County line, the tornado tracked northeast and crossed County Roads 3238 and 3227 before reaching Highway 84. Numerous trees were snapped and uprooted along the tornado's path through Highway 84, with the tornado tearing down a large metal electrical transmission tower off of County Road 3206 northeast of the Sulphur Springs community, while also ripping the roof off of a nearby single family home. The tornado continued northeast snapping and uprooting additional trees, while also damaging the roofs off of several homes as it crossed County Road 3167, FM 2496, County Roads 3155 and 3146. As the tornado crossed Highway 259 and County Road 317, it damaged or destroyed several metal buildings, while also destroying a single-wide mobile home. The tornado also destroyed another single-wide mobile home on FM 95 in the Minden community, while also significantly damaging a nearby single family home. The tornado then crossed FM 1798 and County Road 3125, snapping and uprooting additional trees before crossing FM 840. Here, several metal buildings were destroyed, with damage to roofs and walls on a couple of homes. The tornado crossed County Road 366 before finally lifting just east of County Road 364 about 10 miles east-southeast of Henderson.

In Rusk County, around 50 structures were damaged. The total path length of this tornado from Southern Cherokee, Northwest Nacogdoches, and through Southern and Eastern Rusk Counties was 37.57 miles.

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.