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EF0 tornado in Bienville Parish, Louisiana

Tornado October 29, 2009 · Bienville Parish, Louisiana

EF0
Rating
5.1 mi
Whole path
75 yd
Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Red River Parish → Bienville Parish; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 75 yards (0.04 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado originally developed in Red River Parish and moved northward into Bienville Parish. This tornado was rated an EF0 with large limbs broken along its path. The tornado path width was 75 yards wide and the path length in Bienville Parish was only one half mile long.

The wider storm

Widespread showers and thunderstorms developed along and ahead of a strong cold front as a powerful upper level storm system plowed into the southern plains during the afternoon hours of October 29th. Strong shear was in place across the region such that several tornadic thunderstorms developed...producing widespread wind damage across portions of northeast Texas, southwest Arkansas as well as northern Louisiana. These storms trained across the same general area such that flooding was widespread. Flooding was severe across northwest Louisiana where flooding was reported in many homes and businesses. Area bayous, creeks, rivers and lakes were already at high levels from the excessive heavy rainfall that fell earlier in the month. Thus, some lakes and bayous approached and succeeded their all time record stage levels.

Began near Giddens (32.2366, -93.2825).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

11 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 197614. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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