EF1 Tornado — Bossier, Louisiana

2018-04-13 · near Bossier City, Bossier, Louisiana

Event narrative

This is a continuation of the Caddo Parish tornado. This EF-1 tornado, with estimated maximum winds near 110 mph, crossed the Red River into Downtown Bossier City, where it uprooted a number of trees and broke several large branches between Bossier High School and Interstate 20. Debris from this tornado also shattered the windows at Moffitt Mazda on Old Minden Road. The tornado strengthened near the Heart of Bossier Shopping Center and Benton Road where it uprooted several trees as it moved east northeast towards Pierre Bossier Mall. It uprooted or snapped several trees along the south side of the mall and Interstate 20 in this area. The tornado knocked down the top half of the east-facing wall of a strip mall on the north side of Pierre Bossier Mall. The tornado shifted northeast where it paralleled the north side of East Texas Street where it continued to uproot and snap trees. There were a number of mobile homes that were damaged along East Texas Street (Highway 80) due to falling trees. The tornado was at its weakest point when sporadic tree damage was found as it crossed over Interstate 220 near Louisiana Downs. The tornado began to rapidly strengthen as it approached the Red Chute community where it knocked a large tree down onto a travel trailer in the Hillcrest Mobile Home Park, unfortunately killing a two year-old infant. The tornado did considerable tree damage as it crossed Bellevue Road just north of Highway 80, splitting trunks and uprooting trees as it reached its widest width of 1100 yards. The tornado continued northeast paralleling Adner Road while doing significant tree damage in the northern sections of the Country Place Subdivision near the Eastwood community. Additional tree damage occurred as the tornado crossed Winfield Road west of the community of Princeton just west of Princeton Elementary School. The tornado uprooted a few more trees north of Princeton along Highway 157 before finally lifting.

A total of 69 conventional and manufactured homes were affected by this tornado throughout Bossier Parish, with 25 of these classified as Affected, 33 with Minor Damage, 10 with Major Damage, and 1 as Destroyed.

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 → (32.5116, -93.7375)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 744130. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.