EF2 Tornado — Caddo, Louisiana

2022-12-13 · near Four Forks, Caddo, Louisiana

Event narrative

An EF-2 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 130 mph touched down in extreme Southwest Caddo Parish near the Four Forks community, where it initially produced minor tree damage along Johns Road just to the south of Keatchie Marshall Road. As the tornado crossed Keatchie Marshall Road, it quickly began to strengthen, producing damage to a number of hardwood and softwood trees. The tornado continued its northeast track across Rita and Laurie Ann Streets, where additional trees were snapped and uprooted, and minor damage to a few homes occurred. The tornado then approached a number of manufactured homes as it moved across Pecan Road, producing EF-2 damage with winds estimated at 130 mph. A single-wide mobile home was completely destroyed, with similar damage occurring to three additional single-wide homes on Pecan Road as it moved across Lareta Street. Two other single-wide mobile homes were completely destroyed on both sides of Pecan Road just south of Lareta Street.

As the tornado crossed Lareta Street, it lifted a double-wide manufactured home and tossed it to the north and east. Two residents inside the home were killed, with an 8 year old boy thrown an estimated 500-600 yards to the north, and his 30 year old mother thrown an estimated 200 yards before being found on Paula Road. In addition to these two fatalities, two other individuals on Pecan Road were injured from this tornado. Upon crossing Paula Street, the tornado continued to move northeast, snapping and uprooting additional trees to the west of Four Forks Road before crossing Highway 169 just south of Small Road and lifting.

Wider weather episode

A strong upper level low pressure system shifted northeast out of the Central Rockies across Eastern Colorado and Northwest Kansas during the day on December 13th, which allowed for surface low pressure to develop along an attendant cold front that extended south across Western Kansas into Western Oklahoma and Northwest Texas. Meanwhile, a tightening pressure gradient ahead of the front resulted in strong southerly low level winds across the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley, with an increase in warmer, more humid and unstable air spreading back north into East Texas and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Large scale forcing increased during the afternoon across East Texas ahead of the approaching upper trough, along a dry line that had mixed east ahead of the cold front. Thus, scattered showers and thunderstorms developed across much of East Texas and Western Louisiana, before becoming more numerous as they spread east across North-central Louisiana. Some of these storms became severe across North Louisiana as they tapped the strongly sheared air mass in place and the better instability contributed from daytime heating. A couple of isolated strong tornadoes were spawned across extreme Southwest Caddo Parish near the Four Forks community, as well as near Farmerville in Central Union Parish. These storms exited the region into Northeast Louisiana by late evening.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.2210, -94.0102)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1061294. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.