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EF1 tornado in Union Parish, Louisiana

Tornado April 5, 2022 · Union Parish, Louisiana

EF1
Rating
5.1 mi
Whole path
150 yd
Path width
$10K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Lincoln Parish → Union Parish; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 150 yards (0.09 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This is a continuation of the Eastern Lincoln Parish tornado. As the tornado crossed into Southwest Union Parish, it tracked east across Cranford Road, where it snapped a few trees along the road and across the pasture. The tornado continued to move east across Highway 33 just south of Hicks Frazier Road, where it intensified to an EF-1 with estimated maximum winds near 95 mph and reached its widest point, uprooting numerous hardwood trees adjacent to and behind a home. The tornado also peeled the tin roof off of a metal barn, before entering a heavily wooded area. It then weakened and lifted shortly thereafter upon reaching Wesley Russell Road.

The wider storm

Warm, moist, and unstable air spread north across North and East Texas, North Louisiana, and extreme Southern Arkansas during the evening through the early morning hours of April 4th-5th, behind a warm front that lifted north through these areas. Meanwhile, an upper trough dug through Western Texas and into the Southern Plains during the afternoon and evening hours of the 4th, enhancing large scale forcing along and ahead of a dry line that developed and spread east across North-central Texas. This resulted in shower and thunderstorm development which rapidly intensified over this area, which spread east into East Texas during the late evening through the early morning hours of the 4th-5th. Given the extent of instability and the strong southerly low level jet in place, these storms became severe as they spread east across East Texas and North Louisiana, resulting in numerous reports of damaging winds as these storms organized into a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) which quickly spread across the region through the pre-dawn hours. These storms exited the region to the east prior to sunrise on the 5th.

Began near D Arbonne (32.6940, -92.5190).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1010266. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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