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EF0 tornado in Jim Wells County, Texas

Tornado January 9, 2011 · Jim Wells County, Texas

EF0
Rating
23.3 mi
Whole path
100 yd
Path width
$5.0M
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Jim Wells County → Nueces County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 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

A NWS storm survey concluded a tornado started roughly 4 miles southeast of the Alice International Airport and continued northeast into Nueces County. The tornado damaged trees and blew down 2 power poles just south of FM 665.

The wider storm

A cold front moved through South Texas on Saturday morning, January 8, 2011 and was situated over Deep South Texas Saturday afternoon, with temperatures generally in the 50s area-wide. However as the storm system approached, a surface low pressure area formed along the frontal boundary, which helped to draw warm and humid conditions northward into the Coastal Bend.

As the upper level storm system moved through the region, very strong wind shear developed and combined with an unstable atmosphere to produce a line of severe thunderstorms. A tornadic thunderstorm developed near the proximity of the surface low and retreating warm front, which persisted for over 20 miles travelling from just southeast of Alice to near Calallen. Damaging straight line winds affected most of the Coastal Bend and extended well into the Gulf of Mexico east of Rockport. Widespread wind damage was observed across the Coastal Bend as the storms moved quickly through the region. Approximately 30,000 customers lost power as a result of the storms. This marks the first time a tornado has been recorded in South Texas in the month of January, dating back to 1950. Property damage for the tornado and straight-line winds for the Coastal Bend was estimated to be around 10 million dollars.

From Calallen through Portland and Rockport, doppler radar indicated a broad, yet strong rotation between 4 and 430 AM CST. A NWS storm survey concluded straight-line winds between 70 and 90 mph occurred along this path. A path length of damage of nearly 65 miles was observed from the starting point of the tornado in Jim Wells County to the end of the straight-line wind damage in Rockport.

Further north, doppler radar indicated another bowing segment in the line across Victoria and Calhoun Counties between 400 and 500 AM CST. The Seadrift TCOON site recorded a wind gust of 70 mph. A NWS storm survey team concluded straight line wind speeds of around 70 mph occurred from rural southern Victoria County to Seadrift in southwestern Calhoun County.

Began near (ali)alice Intl Arpt (27.7107, -97.9663).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 278829. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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