EF3 Tornado — Rockwall, Texas

2012-04-03 · near Blackland, Rockwall, Texas

Event narrative

An EF-3 tornado began in eastern Rockwall County and traveled northeast into Hunt County before lifting. The tornado touched down to the southwest of the intersection of FM 548 and Bent Rd in Rockwall County. The tornado quickly moved into a subdivision and severely damaged or destroyed several homes. The worst of the damage in this subdivision occurred along Laci Ln. Trees and shrubs northeast of these houses by a half mile or so were completely debarked and had no vegetation remaining. The tornado continued northeast and produced damage to homes along Country Manor Rd. There was one house that had a large portion of its roof/top story completely removed. A couple of small barns were also destroyed, one which contained a classic car which ended up blown into the back of a neighbor's house. The tornado continued northeast where it crossed Hwy 276 and sideswiped a cabinet factory. Part of the outside metal walls were crumbled. There was an incredible amount of industrial debris downstream of this factory north of the highway. The tornado continued northeast and demolished one mobile home and damaged another right at the Rockwall/Hunt County line. In total, 8 homes in Rockwall County were deemed destroyed, 17 sustained major damage, and 8 sustained minor damage. The path length of the tornado in Rockwall County was nearly 2.4 miles, but the total path length was 3.3 miles. Maximum estimated winds were 150 mph and the tornado was approximately 400 yards wide. Three people sustained minor injuries when their doublewide mobile home was struck near the Rockwall/Hunt County line.

Wider weather episode

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.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.8780, -96.3286)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 377580. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.