EF3 Tornado — Marshall, Mississippi

2025-04-03 · near Taska, Marshall, Mississippi

Event narrative

A tornado touched down near Highway 311, southwest of Slayden, uprooting trees and snapping trunks near Drew Road. As the tornado moved northeast, additional tree damage and some roof damage to a home occurred along Isom Chapel Road. The tornado began to intensify, causing all exterior walls of a home to collapse along Hurdle Club Road in addition to the continuation of uprooting trees. Uprooted trees and snapped tree trunks were widespread across Hogan Road before causing another home's exterior walls to collapse along South Slayden Road. The tornado continued northeast across Marshall County before crossing Highway 72 on the east side of Slayden. Near Kennedy Road, the metal trusses supporting high-tension power lines and a home's exterior walls collapsed, as well as widespread, significant tree damage. Continuing northeast, Early Grove Road had additional tree damage, and another home was damaged. Just before crossing the county line into Benton County, Rice Chapel Road had widespread tree damage with snapped tree trunks. Estimated peak winds were around 160 mph.

Wider weather episode

A significant multi-hazard, multi-day event occurred across the Mid-South from April 2, 2025, to April 8, 2025, producing 35 tornadoes, record flooding, and numerous reports of damaging winds and large hail. A large upper-level trough covered the Western U.S. in early April. A significant piece of energy rotated around the base of the trough and ejected into the Southern Plains and the Middle-Upper Mississippi Valley on April 2nd. A 500 mb jet maximum of 120 knots and a 300 mb jet maximum of 140 knots pushed into Iowa by late afternoon on April 2nd. Meanwhile, a 992 mb surface low moved into the Upper Mississippi Valley with a trailing cold front pushing toward the Mid-South. A secondary, weaker surface low developed over northeast Arkansas and helped to back surface winds. The warm sector across the Mid-South was potent with surface dewpoints climbing into the upper 60s and MLCAPE values climbing to 2000-3000 J/kg. Increasing upper-level divergence occurred in the entrance region of the upper jet, resulting in strong lift across the Mid-South and storm initiation in the increasingly moist and unstable airmass. Hodographs were long, strongly curved, and supportive of tornadoes. Discrete supercells intensified across the Mid-South during the evening as 0-6 km bulk shear values increased to 60-70 knots, and 0-1 km helicity values increased to 300-400 m2/s2. Fifteen tornadoes occurred from late afternoon on April 2nd through about 2 am on April 3rd, including four EF-3s. This period represented the most significant period of severe weather during the event.

The cold front stalled across the Mid-South on April 3rd while moist southwesterly flow aloft continued and anomalous precipitable water values prevailed across the region. Heavy rain fell across northern sections of the Mid-South into the morning hours of April 3rd. Rainfall amounts of 3-4 inches were common across east-central Arkansas, West Tennessee, and extreme northwest Mississippi, along with scattered instances of flash flooding. By the afternoon of April 3rd, the airmass south of the stalled front destabilized and storms strengthened thanks to a 90-knot mid-level jet maximum moving through Missouri. These storms produced wind damage, large hail, flash flooding, and a tornado east of Corinth. Heavy rain continued into the early morning hours on April 4th when the front eventually lifted north of the area, resulting in a relative lull during the day on April 4th.

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Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1256970. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.