EF1 Tornado — Red River, Louisiana

2026-01-10 · near Coushatta Arpt, Red River, Louisiana

Event narrative

A weak EF-1 tornado, with estimated maximum winds near 88 mph, briefly touched down on Highway 71 near the Rolling Hills Trailer Park, where multiple large branches were snapped off of nearby softwood trees and several hardwood trees were found uprooted with large branches snapped along the highway. As the tornado crossed Highway 71, it moved into a field where additional softwood trees were found uprooted and snapped. The tornado then lifted as it moved farther into the field/heavily wooded and rural area.

Wider weather episode

A weak cold front extended from Eastern Oklahoma into Northeast Texas during the late evening into the early morning hours of January 9th-10th, and separated a warm, moist, and unstable air mass to its east, with a slightly cooler but drier air mass to the west. A surface low developed during the evening and overnight hours along the frontal boundary, enhancing a deep southerly low level flow into East Texas and North Louisiana, with a longwave trough shifting east through the Rockies into the Southern Plains enhancing large scale forcing along and ahead of the front across the warm sector. Thus, scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms developed across this area, and spread east across East Texas and North Louisiana during the evening through the overnight hours. These storms tapped better low level wind shear as they entered Northwest Louisiana, which resulted in isolated severe thunderstorms that developed and even spawned a tornado just southeast of Coushatta. These storms weakened as they shifted farther east into Northcentral Louisiana during the early morning hours of the 10th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.9990, -93.2911)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1308441. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.