EF0 Tornado — Hansford, Texas

2024-05-01 · near Spearman, Hansford, Texas

Event narrative

This tornado touched down to the west of County Road 24 where it snapped the top branches and trunk of a couple of hardwood trees. It then traveled south, crossing County Road 24 and lifting the roof off of a building at the Storage Depot. It continued south and caused minor damage to a nearby shed. The tornado lifted before it reached Highway 207. The maximum estimated wind speed was 85mph.

Wider weather episode

An elongated upper level trough promoted a dryline setup for severe storms in the eastern Texas Panhandle. Parameters that day begun as conditional, as a thick layer of low level clouds were present that morning in the far east, and an outflow boundary had moved in from convection on the previous day. However, as skies started to clear out and the cap was eroded, the true potential of the system was realized and thunderstorms initiated off the dryline between 3 -4 pm. A favorable environment for supercells to produce large hail and even some giant hail had materialized, and despite modest low level wind shear values at the onset of the event, tornadoes quickly spun up and posed threats for locations near Clarendon, in Spearman, and other parts surrounding. Strong downdraft and outflow winds were also a concern, but no reports had come in for straight line wind damage. As storms moved east throughout the afternoon and evening, they weakened as they entered into a less favorable environment thanks to some of the low clouds from the morning not clearing up in time to sustain thunderstorms.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.1894, -101.2097)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1175475. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.