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EF3 tornado in Cass County, Texas

Tornado November 4, 2022 · Cass County, Texas

EF3
Rating
16.9 mi
Whole path
650 yd
Path width
1
Death
8
Injuries
$5.0M
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Morris County → Cass County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 650 yards (0.37 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF3 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF3 is severe damage: whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, consistent with estimated gusts of 136–165 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 an EF-3 tornado that occurred in Morris County and tracked into extreme northwestern Cass County. This tornado produced mainly EF-1 damage with estimated maximum winds near 105 mph to a mix of trees and structures as it crossed CR-2888 and CR-2738, before lifting shortly after crossing Texas Highway 77.

The wider storm

A strong upper level trough progressed through the Rockies and into the Central and Southern Plains during the day on November 4th, enhancing strong surface low development over the Upper Red River Valley into Oklahoma. This produced a strong pressure gradient over the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley, allowing for very rich Gulf moisture to surge north across the Ark-La-Tex area into Eastern Oklahoma and much of Arkansas. This generated moderate instability across these areas during the afternoon, as temperatures rose into the lower to mid 80s. Very strong wind shear was also in place over these areas, with the upper trough reinforcing a cold front southeast into Southeast Oklahoma, Western Arkansas, and East Texas. This trough enhanced large scale forcing along the front, with discrete supercell development also occurring ahead of the main line of storms over portions of East Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, and Southwest Arkansas. Multiple tornadoes, some strong, touched down across these areas, with additional instances of damaging winds also reported before the line of storms overtook these discrete supercells and shifted east across the remainder of East Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and into North Louisiana during the evening and overnight hours.

Began near Jennings Lake (33.1800, -94.6520).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

4 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1063556. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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