EF1 Tornado — Lincoln, Louisiana

2018-04-14 · near Grambling, Lincoln, Louisiana

Event narrative

An EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds between 95-105 mph touched down south of Grambling near the intersection of Null and Mondy Roads. The tornado moved east along Mondy Road, turning northeast crossing Tennessee Avenue, and across the Ruston County Club and the south and southeast sections of Ruston snapping and uprooting trees and several wooden power poles along its path. As the tornado entered the southeast sections of Ruston, numerous trees were snapped, falling on homes and vehicles along Highway 167 and Love Avenue. Another tree was snapped and fell onto a car on McAllister Street, with additional trees snapped and uprooted onto homes, power lines, and vehicles on Terrill Drive and Lewis Street before lifting near the intersection of Lewis and Richardson Streets.

A total of 99 conventional and manufactured homes were affected by this tornado throughout Lincoln Parish, with 39 of these classified as Affected, 34 with Minor Damage, 23 with Major Damage, and 3 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 → (32.4827, -92.7249)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 744147. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.