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EF1 tornado in Madison County, Arkansas

Tornado March 25, 2015 · Madison County, Arkansas

EF1

Rating

4.9 mi

Whole path

650 yd

Path width

$275K

Damage as recorded

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

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The path drawn at its surveyed width of 650 yards (0.37 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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 tornado developed northwest of Clifty, where it severely damaged three chicken houses and damaged a home. It moved east-northeast damaging an additional chicken house, several homes, and snapped trees along Highway 127. The tornado then damaged a mobile home, another chicken house, and trees as it crossed Highway 23. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in the tornado was 95 to 105 mph.

The wider storm

Severe thunderstorms developed during the afternoon hours to the east of a surface low pressure system located over southwestern Oklahoma and near a stationary frontal boundary that was draped across northeastern Oklahoma and northwestern Arkansas. Several of these storms developed supercell characteristics due to a very unstable air mass that was in place over the region coupled with strong vertical wind shear. These supercells produced a couple tornadoes, hail up to baseball size, and wind gusts to around 85 mph.

The storms evolved into a line during the evening hours and moved swiftly across northwestern and west central Arkansas, producing wind damage and hail to golfball size.

Locally heavy rainfall as a result of the storms moving repeatedly across the same locations produced localized flash flooding. A flash flood fatality occurred in Carroll County when a vehicle was driven into flood waters and was swept off the road.

Began near Clifty (36.2633, -93.8306).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 560282. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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