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EF1 tornado in Roberts County, Texas

Tornado November 16, 2015 · Roberts County, Texas

EF1
Rating
23.2 mi
Whole path
300 yd
Path width

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 300 yards (0.17 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

The details of this tornado track was primarily based on video and photo evidence, and radar data. This tornado was produced by the same supercell which caused the tornado near Groom and the tornado near Pampa which destroyed the Halliburton Plant. Damage from this particular tornado was limited to broken wooden utility poles in Roberts County. The tornado was rated EF-1 with an estimated maximum wind speed of 100 mph.

The wider storm

A powerful storm system brought significant severe weather to the region. Tornadoes, damaging winds, and large hail accompanied thunderstorms that formed during the afternoon hours and persisted into the evening. This was a very unusual event for late fall in the Central High Plains. One significant factor in this anomalous event was the presence of an unusual amount of moisture for mid-November, contributing to relatively high values of instability. No tornadoes had previously been documented in the Texas Panhandle during the month of November.

Began near Codman (35.6203, -100.7927).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 608867. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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