Thunderstorm Wind — Morris, Texas

2023-06-15 · near Lone Star, Morris, Texas

Event narrative

Trees downed on a couple of homes in Lone Star.

Wider weather episode

Late during the evening of June 15th, regional radar analysis showed several clusters of severe thunderstorms ongoing along the middle Red River Valley into Northeast Texas. The eastern-most cluster displayed signs of cold pool intensification and developed a bowing structure. Observational trends farther downstream favored a continued motion along the instability gradient to the southeast through midnight into the early morning hours on June 16th. Given that the background wind fields and buoyancy were still quite strong, the threat of damaging winds upwards of 75+ mph and large hail increased as the complex moved into far Northeast Texas and Northwest Louisiana just after midnight.

Farther west near the Red River, additional storm development occurred along the trailing outflow. Less organized than the eastern cluster, individual storms, including a few supercells, eventually evolved and remained semi-discrete for a few hours. Given the more cellular nature, large hail was a threat initially with the amount of instability upwards of 5000 J/kg and 60 knots of effective shear. A greater risk of damaging winds gradually evolved as storms remained organized and grew upscale overnight.

As a result, large hail up to 2+ inches in diameter eventually occurred in some storms followed by an intense bow echo, resulting in widespread severe winds and even some hurricane-force gusts, setting the stage for initiating a derecho-type event across much of Northeast Texas and North Louisiana. In addition, an isolated tornado also occurred near the Texas/Louisiana state line on the south flank of the extreme derecho winds.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.9400, -94.7100)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1112427. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.