EF3 Tornado — Choctaw, Oklahoma

2016-05-09 · near Boswell Ammons Arpt, Choctaw, Oklahoma

Event narrative

This is the second segment of a two segment tornado that began at 624 pm CDT in Bryan County, Oklahoma. The tornado strengthened and widened rapidly after developing southeast of Bennington. It was about 2500 yards wide and was producing EF-2 damage to trees by the time it reached the Choctaw County border at around 627 pm CDT.

In Choctaw County, the tornado continued to widen as it moved northeast, producing a damage path of about 1.8 miles across, to the southwest of Boswell. The tornado made a turn to the east at the N4000 Road and maintained an eastward movement until dissipating before reaching the N4090 Road. The tornado destroyed at least three mobile homes. Two injuries occurred in one of the mobile homes, one of which was a critical injury. Numerous homes were damaged by this tornado, with the worst damage including major loss of the roof structure and collapse of a few exterior walls. Numerous outbuildings were also destroyed. A metal, high-voltage transmission tower/truss was destroyed, and numerous power poles were snapped. Many trees were snapped or uprooted in the path. Trees in several areas were reduced to shortened trunks with short stumps where large limbs previously existed. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in this segment of the tornado was 140 to 150 mph.

Wider weather episode

Severe thunderstorms developed along and ahead of a dry line across central Oklahoma during the afternoon of May 9th. The storms moved across eastern Oklahoma during the evening hours. Prior to the storms moving into the area, the atmosphere ahead of the dry line in eastern Oklahoma had become very unstable. This instability, combined with very strong wind shear associated with a strong trough of low pressure that moved into the Southern Plains from the Southern Rockies, resulted in the development of supercell thunderstorms. One of these supercells produced multiple tornadoes as it tracked along and near an outflow boundary from morning thunderstorms, which had settled across southeastern Oklahoma by the afternoon. One of the tornadoes was long-lived and damaging. In addition to the tornadoes in southeastern Oklahoma, the severe thunderstorms produced hail up to golfball size and damaging wind gusts across other portions of eastern Oklahoma.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.9861, -95.9379)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 638856. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.