EF2 Tornado — Cass, Texas

2023-06-14 · near Antioch, Cass, Texas

Event narrative

An EF-2 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 120 mph initially produced damage along the shore of Wright Patman Lake. It snapped and uprooted hundreds of hardwood and softwood trees along its path, first crossing CR-3555. After it crossed CR-3555, it peeled part of a roof off of a single family home. The tornado continued to snap and uproot trees as it paralleled CR-3555 and crossed CR-3551 and CR-3554. The tornado strengthened to EF-2 intensity as it crossed CR-3659 and produced more widespread snapping of trees. As the tornado continued on, its most intense damage was at a two-story industrial facility along US-59. The tornado tore off the roof and damaged walls of the facility, bending and breaking parts of metal frame of its roof structure.

After crossing US-59 and tossing vehicles, the tornado snapped more trees on the other side of the road. The tornado weakened some with more uprooting and sporadic tree snaps as it crossed FM-2327, CR-3781, CR-3778, FM-3129, and CR-3886. It finally lifted as it crossed CR-3889 as damage transitioned to all straight-line wind damage with winds estimated at 80 to 90 mph as the storm continued to the border of Cass County, Texas and Miller County, Arkansas.

Wider weather episode

Supercell thunderstorms developed toward midday across the middle Red River Valley along and south of a stalled frontal boundary. These thunderstorms progressed east southeast with upper 80s temperatures on the warm side of the boundary with dew points exceeding 75 degrees. Mid-level lapse rates of 7-8 C/km overspread this very moist low-level air mass over a rather broad west-to-east corridor, supporting extreme instability upwards of 4500 J/kg well downstream of the upscale-growing convection. Coinciding this corridor of extreme buoyancy was very strong effective bulk shear near 65 kts along with hodographs that were modestly curved at the low levels and elongated above 3 km AGL. Numerous local storm reports were documented of large hail, damaging wind gusts, and an isolated tornado across parts of East and Northeast Texas throughout the event.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.2440, -94.2162)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1115015. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.