EF3 Tornado — St. Bernard, Louisiana

2022-03-22 · near Arabi, St. Bernard, Louisiana

Event narrative

A tornado moved into St. Bernard Parish from Orleans Parish near Friscoville Avenue at the Mississippi River. The most intense damage was from the riverbank to the canal in Arabi. It was a very narrow, intense tornado with two areas of concentrated EF3 damage. One was a house that was swept off its raised foundation with all walls and the roof destroyed. This was near where the one fatality occurred. Due to poor construction, this was EF3. The highest EF3 rating was given to a house that was constructed in the last 6 months. While this house was raised on cinder blocks, every tower of blocks had strapping to the house. The house had additional strapping directly into the foundation, as well as strapping from the cinder blocks to the foundation. The house itself held together but was shifted about 50 yards to the north and rotated about 90 degrees. The house next door was also swept off the foundation, moved and mostly destroyed. This also had some evidence of strapping to the slab foundation. This area is what will justify the 160 MPH EF3 rating. Most if not all houses on the south to north path within a 4 block west to east range received minor to substantial roof damage with many houses seeing walls collapsed, leaving interior rooms intact. The tornado then damaged electrical towers on the bank of the canal before moving northeast across Intercoastal Waterway back into Orleans Parish.

Wider weather episode

An upper level system moved into north-central Texas on March 22nd. Thunderstorms began developing in the unstable warm sector ahead of a cold front moving east into east Texas and western LA. Very strong low and mid level winds ahead of the cold front brought in ample low level moisture with dewpoints reaching into the 70's near the coast. As temperatures at the surface warmed into the 80s and temps aloft dropped, the atmosphere steadily became unstable. Increasing shear combined with the very unstable atmosphere set the stage for 5 tornadoes to develop, one of them was violent, resulting in 2 fatalities.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (29.9473, -90.0063)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1014021. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.