EF1 Tornado — Lafayette, Arkansas

2024-04-28 · near Canale, Lafayette, Arkansas

Event narrative

A brief EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 110 mph touched down and tracked east along and just south of County Road 7 in the far southwestern portion of Lafayette County. Despite its short path, the tornado produced higher end EF-1 damage with maximum estimated wind speeds attributed to snapping of power poles and the near destruction of a metal barn housing hay bales. Otherwise, damage was mostly limited to trees in the form of uproots, trunk snaps, and downing of large limbs.

Wider weather episode

Regenerative thunderstorm development occurred during the afternoon on April 28th across Central Texas along existing outflows from an MCS that decayed earlier in the morning. Surface temperatures continued to warm into the upper 70s to lower 80s within cloud breaks south and east of the large-scale outflow boundary across East Texas and Southwest Arkansas. This led to moderate buoyancy with upper 60s to lower 70s surface dew points. Upscale growth continued along the regenerating MCS as it propagated farther east across the Ark-La-Tex early into the evening. With a favorable deep layer wind profile (0-6km shear near 50 knots), supercells were possible within any emerging thunderstorm clusters. Although shear profiles favored supercells, primary storm mode remained the MCS. Even so, a few tornadoes resulted within embedded circulations, along a few very discrete storm structures that evolved independently of the MCS. Meanwhile, the leading edge of a surging bow echo resulted in widespread damaging winds across Miller and Lafayette Counties with the mature squall line.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.0496, -93.7644)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1176758. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.