EF1 Tornado — Sevier, Arkansas

2025-04-30 · near Lockesburg, Sevier, Arkansas

Event narrative

An EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 95 mph touched down just south of of Highway 24 about 2 miles west of Lockesburg, where it caused significant damage to a small shed. The tornado then moved northeast across Highway 24, snapping and uprooting trees and just missing a home on the north side of the highway. A trampoline and small playground near the home were blown about 50 yards directly to the west from their original location. Although the road network became sparse beyond this point, drone footage indicated that the damage path continued from the home to Wildwood and Hilltop Roads where a number of trees were snapped and uprooted. The tornado did cause significant damage to three chicken coops located just north of Hilltop Road, while also snapping/uprooting additional trees in this area as well. It then tracked across Shady Lane just to the north of Hilltop Road and uprooted a very large tree, with another tree uprooted and having fallen onto a small home on the west side of Shady Lane. The tornado continued to move northeast over North Park Avenue, Elm Drive, and Highway 71 north of Lockesburg. The damage path became more sparse as the tornado crossed Montgomery Lane just east of Highway 71, with a few other small trees downed on Provo Road just east of Big Timber Lane before the tornado lifted.

Wider weather episode

A weak cold front slowly advanced southeast into portions of Northeast Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, into Western Arkansas and Southern Missouri on April 30th, and focused a warm, very moist, and unstable air mass in place across much of East Texas, North Louisiana, and Southwest Arkansas during the afternoon through the evening hours. Meanwhile, an upper low pressure area ejected northeast from the Desert Southwest into the Texas Panhandle, with deep southwest flow aloft yielding weak disturbances along the front to induce large scale forcing across much of East Texas and Southwest Arkansas. As a result, a complex of strong to severe thunderstorms developed and spread into areas along and to the southeast of the front, yielding instances of damaging winds across portions of Southwest Arkansas during the afternoon. An isolated tornado was also spawned just west of Lockesburg in Sevier County, before these storms gradually exited the region by early evening.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.9668, -94.1971)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1257111. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.