EF3 Tornado — Lincoln, Louisiana

2019-04-25 · near Barnet Spgs, Lincoln, Louisiana

Event narrative

An EF-3 tornado with maximum estimated winds near 145 mph touched down just northeast of the intersection of Highway 80 and Highway 818 where several trees were uprooted. It continued northeast, crossing South Maple Street where the tornado intensified, resulting in widespread tree damage just south of Highway 3012 along Wade Drive, Lind Drive, Robert Street, University Boulevard, and Shelor Drive. Many of these streets were impassable due to the significant number of trees snapped, twisted, and uprooted. Many more trees were downed on Highway 3012 before the tornado tracked northeast towards Westwood Drive. It uprooted a number of trees onto fraternity houses before it crossed the Kansas City Southern Railroad. The tornado crossed the railroad and bent or uprooted several large light poles on Louisiana Tech's softball, baseball, and neighboring athletic fields. It snapped a number of power poles as well. The tornado crossed Tech Drive and damaged a number of dormitories where it removed their metal roofs and blew out windows. It continued northeast where it uprooted more trees on Louisiana Tech's and Ruston High School's campuses. The estimated winds as the tornado tore through the western and northern sections of Louisiana Tech University ranged from 115-130 mph. The tornado crossed Greenwood Cemetery where it intensified again, resulting in a large number of trees being debarked with just the stubs of the large branches remaining in several areas. It continued with several business sustaining significant damage to their exterior brick walls and some interior walls. A hotel along Interstate 20 suffered the collapse of its top story's exterior walls. The tornado continued on to severely damage a gas station between Trenton and Vienna Streets just south of I-20, before crossing the interstate and weakened slightly but still resulted in considerable roof damage to several businesses along North Service Road East. The tornado then began to weaken, with more sporadic wind damage noted as it moved northeast towards Farmerville Highway. It crossed Farmerville Highway near Timberline Court uprooting a number of trees and continued northeast towards Haddox Road. The tornado then lifted and touched back down a few more times with the intermittent damage noted for the rest of its path. It uprooted a few more trees along Stable and Baxter Roads, destroyed a chicken house along Highway 820, before finally lifting just south of Oak Tree Road. The tornado resulted in two fatalities when a tree fell through their home, killing a 35 year old female and her 14 year old son just south of Interstate 20 in Ruston.

The Louisiana State Fire Marshal concluded that 22 buildings were destroyed by the tornado, 154 buildings sustained major damage, with 254 buildings receiving minor damage in the city of Ruston. The Louisiana Tech University campus had 16 buildings that could not be occupied, with the softball, baseball, and soccer fields, as well as 2 dormitories, suffering major damage. In all, approximately 1220 structures were affected by this tornado throughout Lincoln Parish.

Entergy Power Company concluded that 35 power poles were broken throughout the city of Ruston, with numerous spans of power lines also downed. Given the extensive damage throughout the city of Ruston, mandatory curfews were enforced by the Ruston Police Department, Lincoln Parish Sheriff's Department, and the Louisiana State Police.

Wider weather episode

A strong closed upper level low pressure system advanced east across Central Texas during the evening hours of April 24th, which helped to mix a warm front north into portions of Deep East Texas and Northcentral Louisiana. As a result, warm, moist, and unstable air began to build north along and south of the front, as steepening lapse rates aloft spread east along the axis of increasing large scale forcing ahead of the low. This resulted in an increase in scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms near and south of the warm front from the late evening hours of the 24th through the early morning hours of the 25th across East Texas and North Louisiana. Coupled with the strong wind shear present across the expanding warm sector, several supercell thunderstorms developed, with one supercell spawning six separate tornadoes from San Augustine Texas northeast to Eastern Union Parish Louisiana, directly impacting the cities of San Augustine Texas and Ruston Louisiana along its 150+ mile track across the NWS Shreveport County Warning Area. In fact, this supercell spawned another tornado across Northwest Morehouse and Southern Ashley County Arkansas, to complete its nearly 180 mile track before dissipating. Other isolated supercells developed near and south of the warm front which spawned tornadoes across Northern Caddo Parish and Central La Salle Parish in Northern Louisiana, with other severe thunderstorms producing damaging winds across portions of Northcentral Louisiana as well, before the storms exited the region around daybreak on the 25th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.5112, -92.6729)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 815582. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.