EF0 Tornado — Donley, Texas

2024-05-01 · near Clarendon, Donley, Texas

Event narrative

This tornado touched down briefly in ranch land to the west southwest of Clarendon. The damage appeared to be mostly from damaged mesquite brush and perhaps some fencing material. Survey information was obtained from local officials as access was hard due to private land and terrain. The tornado was also documented on chaser/spotter footage and appeared to not be on the ground but for a couple of minutes before lifting. The maximum estimated winds were 80mph.

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 → (34.9165, -100.9991)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1175479. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.