EF1 Tornado — Morris, Texas

2025-03-04 · near Cason, Morris, Texas

Event narrative

This EF1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 88 mph developed within a QLCS and began along Farm-to-Market Road 144 just north of Highway 49 in extreme eastern Morris County. The tornado moved east northeast across Hunt Road/County Road 1235, Green Street Road/County Road 1233, and County Road 3208, uprooting numerous trees and breaking large branches. The tornado continued northeast crossing Wilson Road, Kelly Road, Foster Road, and Old Daingerfield Road before moving across U.S. Highway 259 north of Rocky Branch. More tree limbs were downed as the tornado crossed County Road 4212, Highway 338, and Daniels Chapel Road. The tornado uprooted more softwood trees before lifting on Daniels Chapel Road just east of its intersection with Leeves Road and just west of the Morris/Cass County line. Just east of there, a significant number of large pine trees were uprooted at a property at the intersection of Daniels Chapel Road and FM Road 161. However, the damage pattern of these uproots was consistent with straight-line wind damage and not a tornado. The tornado had a maximum width of 735 yards and tracked nearly 9 miles.

Wider weather episode

A very mature squall line developed along and ahead of an advancing cold front across the Ark-La-Tex region during the mid to late morning into early afternoon on March 4th. Damaging wind gusts were the primary threat with this squall line, but numerous strong mesovorticies became embedded within this quasi-linear convective system (QLCS). Dew points were in the mid to upper 60s with over 500 J/kg of MLCAPE and 450 m2/s2 of 0-1 km storm relative helicity (SRH). As temperatures continued to warm into the lower 70s with MLCAPE increasing to around 1000 J/kg MLCAPE, the increasing threat of supercell thunderstorm development only heightened the tornado threat. As a result, numerous reports of damaging straight-line wind gusts and several tornadoes were documented across East and Northeast Texas.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.1030, -94.8072)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1249735. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.