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EF2 tornado in Cass County, Texas

Tornado June 14, 2023 · Cass County, Texas

EF2

Rating

8.9 mi

Path length

500 yd

Path width

$2.0M

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 500 yards (0.28 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 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

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.

The wider storm

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.

Began near Antioch (33.2440, -94.2162).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1115015. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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