EF2 Tornado — Greene, Arkansas

2025-03-14 · near Brookings, Greene, Arkansas

Event narrative

A tornado crossed from northern Craighead County into Greene County and continued northeast where additional tree damage was noted. Some of the gaps in damage indicators over areas that were difficult to access were filled in using Sentinel satellite data. As the tornado approached Paragould, the tornado intensified just before Pruetts Chapel Road causing damage in the Club View Estates and The Enclave communities. Multiple homes have significant roof damage. A few homes in the Club View Estates neighborhood were impacted by a tornado for the second time in 10 months. A home on South 34th Street had several first-story walls collapsed into the home, with the entire second floor collapsed on itself. An additional home on Enclave Circle had large sections of the brick exterior collapsed inward on the home with about half of the second floor and roof missing. The tornado continued to the northeast, causing damage to a two-story home on Valley South Drive with large sections of the second floor collapsed inward or missing. The tornado moved northeast onto Park Ridge Drive, with additional roof damage and trees uprooted. The tornado continued along Chateau Blvd causing minor damage to an assisted living building and uprooting more trees. After crossing Highway 49, Clove Circle was impacted with a home losing its roof and causing some minor brick damage to the home. The tornado intensified again near West Mueller Street, causing significant damage to a home. The tornado continued northeast along West Park Street causing a few homes to lose portions of their roofs and uprooting multiple trees. As the tornado crossed Highway 412, multiple metal building systems were damaged. Damage included a partially collapsed outbuilding, roof damage to multiple buildings, and debris being tracked to the northeast. No additional damage was noted beyond this area. Tornado damage is consistent with an EF-2 tornado with 125 mph winds in Paragould.

Wider weather episode

An upper low over the Central Plains moved into the Upper Mississippi Valley during the evening hours of Friday, March 14, 2025. Increasing moisture advection ahead of an approaching cold front lifted dewpoints into the low to mid 60s. This coupled with increasing height falls and a mid-level 80 knot jet rotating around the main upper low supported severe thunderstorm development. Large looping hodographs, MLCAPE values over 2000 J/kg, 60 knots of bulk shear, and 0-1 km SRH values between 250 and 350 m2/s2 supported an all hazards threat. Storm mode during the overnight hours was supercellular with large hail, damaging winds and several tornadoes, a few of which were strong (EF2+), mainly across northeast Arkansas, the Missouri Bootheel and northeast Mississippi.

The main upper low lifted into the western Great Lakes Region by early Saturday morning, March 15, 2025. The cold front stalled just to the west of the Mississippi River. Simultaneously, a neutrally-tilted longwave trough moved across the Southern Plains and pushed a 100 knot mid-level jet into the region. This placed West Tennessee and north Mississippi beneath the left exit region of the jet with widespread lift and diffluence available. As a result, showers and thunderstorms rapidly redeveloped across north Mississippi and parts of West Tennessee Saturday morning. Storms quickly formed into a line that slowly moved east. The line of storms produced damaging winds, large hail and a weak tornado Saturday morning. The airmass ahead of the line became even more favorable for severe storms by Saturday afternoon with MLCAPE values increasing to 1500 J/kg and 0-1km SRH values reaching 300 m2/s2 as a surface low moving along the cold front and backed surface winds across northeast Mississippi. Discrete supercells formed ahead of the line during the afternoon producing a couple of weak tornadoes and damaging winds over parts of northeast Missisisppi. Flash flooding was also common due to the slow moving nature of the system.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (35.9670, -90.6860)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1249589. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.