TornadoLookup

Home / Arkansas / Benton

EF1 tornado in Benton County, Arkansas

Tornado May 26, 2024 · Benton County, Arkansas

EF1
Rating
12.1 mi
Whole path
300 yd
Path width
$225K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Benton County → Benton County → Madison County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 300 yards (0.17 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

This tornado began approximately one mile south of War Eagle along County Road 303, where numerous trees were uprooted, with some large trunks snapped. The tornado moved northeast where it crossed Highway 12, damaging a mobile home, downing power lines and snapping and uprooting trees. The tornado then crossed Highway 127 where it uprooted trees onto homes, knocked down power lines, and snapped large trunks before dissipating. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in the tornado was 100 to 110 mph.

The wider storm

Severe thunderstorms developed over western Oklahoma during the afternoon of the 25th, along a sharpening dry line, and moved east across Oklahoma during the evening, and across northwestern Arkansas during the early morning hours of the 26th. The atmosphere east of the dry line across Oklahoma and western Arkansas was moist and very unstable. Wind fields above the ground and deep layer wind shear strengthened during the afternoon through the early morning hours of the 26th, as an upper level disturbance translated into the Southern Plains. Additionally, low level wind shear increased late in the evening and continued very strong into the early morning hours of the 26th. These conditions were very supportive for the development of supercell thunderstorms. One of these supercells became particularly intense and long-tracked as it moved across northeastern Oklahoma and northwestern Arkansas, producing multiple tornadoes, several of which were strong. Large hail to baseball size and swaths of damaging straight-line wind also occurred, resulting in considerable damage.

Began near Wareagle (36.2548, -93.9444).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

5 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1184534. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

Tornadoes near your address

See every tornado that passed near a place you know, measured to its path.