EF1 Tornado — Caddo, Louisiana

2018-04-13 · near Nichols, Caddo, Louisiana

Event narrative

A strong EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 105 mph touched down just west of Highway 3132 and Interstate 20 on Dixie Boulevard, where it uprooted a few trees. The tornado continued east northeast crossing Highway 3132 snapping several large branches from trees along and just north of the National Weather Service Shreveport office but across the northern fringes of the Shreveport Regional Airport, before crossing Hollywood Avenue and tearing off portions of the roofs of three hotels on Monkhouse Drive near Interstate 20. Portions of the roof off of the Shreveport Fire Department Station #16 near the entrance of the Shreveport Regional Airport was also ripped off, and several nearby trees were uprooted as well. The tornado paralleled Interstate 20 where it uprooted trees and damaged a few billboard signs. The tornado then shifted north northeast crossing Jewella Avenue near Jackson Street where it began to cause significant tree damage in this area. The tornado swelled to around 800 yards wide where it uprooted and snapped numerous trees along a 13 block path east northeast to the vicinity of the intersection of Hearne Avenue and Lakeshore Drive in the Queensborough neighborhood. Major structural damage occurred to a two-story home at the 2600 block of Stonewall Street when a large tree was uprooted and fell onto the home in Queensborough. Additional major structural damage occurred to the Galilee Learning Center at the 1600 block of Gary Street in Queensborough as well. The tornado continued northeast into Downtown Shreveport causing sporadic tree damage before crossing the Red River into Downtown Bossier City.

Wider weather episode

A strong upper level trough of low pressure progressed east across the Southern Plains during the afternoon of April 13th, with a large warm sector of warm/humid air having expanded north across much of the Ark-La-Tex. A capping inversion delayed the onset of thunderstorm development until the late afternoon, where it eroded and large scale forcing increased with shortwave perturbations ahead of the trough and along/just ahead of a dry line as it mixed east to the Interstate 35 corridor or North and Central Texas. Given the moderate instability and strong wind shear that developed with the lead shortwave, scattered supercell thunderstorms developed across Northcentral Louisiana during the late afternoon through mid evening hours, producing numerous reports of damaging winds, and several tornadoes/funnel cloud reports. While a lull in the storms was observed, a line of severe thunderstorms developed along the dryline south of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, and progressed east into East Texas by late evening, and across North Louisiana after midnight on April 14th. Damaging winds and reports of hail were prevalent at first with this line of severe thunderstorms, but a number of notches developed along the squall line as these storms crossed into North Louisiana, resulting in several tornadoes touching down across areas along and north of the Interstate 20 corridor from Shreveport to Monroe. Of particular interest, the initial string of tornadoes first touched down just west of the Texas/Louisiana state line along the Harrison/Panola County line, with this supercell producing two separate tornadoes as it entered Shreveport. In fact, the tornado remained on the ground across much of western and central Shreveport, moving across the northern fringes of the property at the National Weather Service Office before moving across the Queensborough and Allendale neighborhoods and across Downtown Shreveport, before tracking across much of Bossier City along and just north of Interstate 20, crossing Interstate 220, and across the Red Chute and Princeton communities before lifting just west of the Bossier/Webster Parish line. These severe thunderstorms exited North Louisiana just after 3 am on the 14th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.4521, -93.8531)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 743585. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.