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EF0 tornado in Tarrant County, Texas

Tornado April 3, 2012 · Tarrant County, Texas

EF0
Rating
0.5 mi
Path length
60 yd
Path width
$55K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 60 yards (0.03 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

An EF-0 tornado occurred in the northern portions of Grand Prairie with maximum estimated winds around 85 mph. The tornado began just south of the intersection of Highway 360 and East Avenue K. As the tornado traveled northeast, it damaged the roofs of a few warehouse buildings and a strip mall. It also knocked over some light and electric poles. The tornado lifted just past Westpark Drive with a path length just under a half of a mile.

The wider storm

A historic North Texas tornado outbreak occurred on April 3rd, with 17 tornadoes developing from the DFW Metroplex east to Hopkins County. An EF-3 tornado tore through the town of Forney, heavily damaging homes in the Diamond Creek subdivision. Three EF-2 tornadoes damaged parts of Arlington and Kennedale in Tarrant County; Red Oak, Lancaster, and Dallas in Ellis and Dallas counties; and Royse City in Rockwall and Hunt counties. An EF-1 tornado caused damage near Joshua in Johnson County, and the remaining 12 tornadoes were rated EF-0s. In addition to the tornadoes, large hail damaged many parts of the DFW Metroplex. Approximately 110 airplanes at DFW International Airport were damaged by the hail and taken out of service until repaired. No fatalities occurred and only 29 people were injured. Of the 29 injuries, only 3 were considered serious but everyone made a full recovery. The environmental set-up on this day consisted of a cut-off low over New Mexico with a front draped north-to-south across the western counties of the CWA. By mid to late morning, strong and severe storms developed along the front as a lobe of energy rotated into west Texas and forcing from this energy overspread the front. The atmosphere was already unstable and uncapped by this time. In addition, a Mesoscale Convective System in Oklahoma sent an outflow boundary south across the Red River. This outflow boundary moved south of the DFW Metroplex by the late morning hours, and isolated storms began to develop south of the outflow boundary but east of the front. As these storms moved north and crossed the outflow boundary, the low level rotation increased and the storms quickly became tornadic. All of the tornadic storms were tied to this outflow boundary as it retreated north as a warm front.

Began near Tarrant (32.7725, -97.0623).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 375259. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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