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EF1 tornado in Lafayette County, Arkansas

Tornado April 28, 2024 · Lafayette County, Arkansas

EF1
Rating
1.4 mi
Path length
150 yd
Path width
$50K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 150 yards (0.09 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

A brief EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 90 mph touched down and tracked northeast to the west of Lake Erling, starting along Hood Road and lifting just after crossing Highway 160. The tornado could have begun slightly before Hood Road, but many trees crossing that road limited the survey team's access farther to the southwest. Damage was mostly to trees in the form of uproots, trunk snaps, and downing of large limbs.

There were also a multitude of trees downed to the northeast in a widespread area around Lake Erling. Some trees produced structural damage as they fell on residences and the damage was attributed to straight line winds of 60 to 80 mph, not the tornado.

The wider storm

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.

Began near Kizer (33.0702, -93.6028).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1176759. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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