EF0 tornado in Bienville Parish, Louisiana

An EF-0 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 85 mph touched down on Highway 516 in Northwest Bienville Parish. There, it damaged the roof of a single wide manufactured home and downed a large tree branch. It then intermittently touched down with damage next found by a church on Garrett Road to the northeast of the Fryeburg community. The tornado snapped two trees and uprooted two others behind a church before it quickly lifted. This tornado was embedded within a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) with additional straight-line wind damage occurring in

vicinity of the tornado in Bienville Parish.

A potent upper-level trough progressed from the Four-Corners Region into the Texas Panhandle by late in the afternoon on March 2nd. Strong warm and moist air advection was ongoing in advance of the trough earlier in the morning. This resulted in scattered convection, but this had little effect on increasing instability through the afternoon as temperatures warmed into the mid and upper 70s to lower and mid 80s. Additionally, backing surface winds also promoted increasing low-level shear as well as deep-layer shear with a 50-60 knot low-level jet surging east ahead of the trough and advancing cold front. This environment was supportive of several supercells that developed by late afternoon into the early evening hours, producing several tornadoes in addition to large hail and damaging wind gusts. As the cold front surged east of I-35 by early in the evening, the storm mode eventually became more linear with an increasing threat of more widespread damaging winds along the complex of storms while the threats of large hail and isolated tornadoes continued through the end of the event.