EF1 Tornado — Lafayette, Arkansas

2024-07-08 · near Canale, Lafayette, Arkansas

Event narrative

This is a continuation of the Northern Bossier Parish tornado. This EF-1 tornado, with maximum estimated winds near 105 mph, tracked north into extreme Southwest Lafayette County just east of County Road 1, where it remained over mainly open farmland before damaging 6 power poles just south of the intersection of County Road 1 and Lafayette 47. Two of these power poles were snapped, which resulted in the 105 mph estimated maximum wind rating, before the tornado crossed Lafayette 47 across a corn field where it laid out a 50 yard wide section of corn. Pictures and video were taken of the tornado over open farmland before lifting about 300 yards southwest of a farm along Highway 160 west of Gin City. This same storm was part of a multi-vortex tornado, with a second tornado having produced minor damage about 3/4 mile to the west along Lafayette 47.

Wider weather episode

Tropical Storm Beryl briefly strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph winds as it made landfall along the Southeast Texas coast near Matagorda Bay during the early morning hours of July 8th, and tracked north-northeast across East Texas and into Southwest Arkansas during the afternoon and evening hours. While Beryl weakened into a tropical storm over portions of Deep East Texas by mid-afternoon, very strong wind shear and helicity existed near and east of the center, contributing to the largest tornado outbreak in NWS Shreveport history, as well as with any landfalling tropical system. A total of 43 tornadoes were confirmed through NWS surveys across East Texas, North Louisiana, and Southwest Arkansas, before Beryl weakened into a depression by late afternoon over East Texas. As a part of this outbreak, six tornadoes touched down across portions of Southwest Arkansas.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.0193, -93.7966)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1195787. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.