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EF0 tornado in Madison County, Arkansas

Tornado March 25, 2015 · Madison County, Arkansas

EF0

Rating

4.9 mi

Whole path

200 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.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 200 yards (0.11 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 second tornado developed west of Highway 23 to the south of the dissipating tornado northeast of Clifty. A home was damaged, a barn was destroyed, and large tree limbs were snapped by this tornado. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in the tornado was 75 to 85 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 (36.2698, -93.7703).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 560284. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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