EF1 Tornado — Sabine, Texas

2025-03-04 · near Yellowpine, Sabine, Texas

Event narrative

This strong EF1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 105 mph touched down in the Sabine National Forest along Forest Road 144, where numerous softwood trees were snapped and uprooted. The heaviest concentration of damage was near the intersection of Forest Road 144 and Forest Road 144A, where the tornado was at its strongest and widest. This tornado tracked northeast across inaccessible areas of the forest, before crossing Highway 87 just south of the Six Mile community. Numerous additional softwood trees were snapped and uprooted between Forest Road 182 and Shawnee Shores Drive, before lifting within a cove in Toledo Bend Reservoir along Shawnee Shores Drive. The tornado had a maximum width of 625 yards and tracked over 5 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 → (31.2060, -93.8240)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1249738. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.