EF3 Tornado — Cass, Texas

2022-11-04 · near Jennings Lake, Cass, Texas

Event narrative

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.

Wider weather episode

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.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.1800, -94.6520)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1063556. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.