EF1 Tornado — Bowie, Texas

2025-03-04 · near Hodgson, Bowie, Texas

Event narrative

This EF1 tornado was the continuation of a tornado that began in Red River County. Upon exiting Red River County, the tornado continued east toward the town of New Hope, continuing to produce extensive tree damage in the form of snapped trunks and uproots. After moving east of New Hope, the tornado followed along County Road 4303 toward Hubbard, eventually crossing Farm-to-Market Road 1840 before heading toward the town of Malta. The tornado crossed U.S. Highway 82 near Malta and continued east northeast for a few more miles, before eventually lifting near the intersection of County Road 3014 and FM Road 3378. The tornado tracked nearly 17 miles across western and northwestern parts of Bowie County with a maximum width of 850 yards and estimated peak wind speeds of 100 mph.

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 → (33.4409, -94.7466)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1249742. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.