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EF0 tornado in Tulsa County, Oklahoma

Tornado May 21, 2019 · Tulsa County, Oklahoma

EF0
Rating
2.7 mi
Whole path
75 yd
Path width
1
Injury
$125K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Tulsa County → Tulsa County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 75 yards (0.04 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado moved north across a mainly industrial area east of N Peoria Avenue and south of Highway 75. Radar detected a tornadic debris signature in this area, and a survey team from NWS Tulsa investigated the area. No damage was found in the industrial area, as access to the area where the tornado occurred was limited. This tornado dissipated just before a stronger tornado developed near this location.

The wider storm

A strong upper level storm system moved into the Southern Plains from the Rockies on the 20th and 21st. The attendant warm front moved from northern Texas northward into northeastern Oklahoma during the day on the 20th, and then the cold front associated with this storm system moved through eastern Oklahoma during the late evening of the 20th and early morning hours of the 21st. Warm, moist, and very unstable air resided across eastern Oklahoma ahead of this system. This pattern resulted in multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms across eastern Oklahoma from the early afternoon of the 20th through late morning of the 21st. Very strong wind shear coexisting with the strong instability resulted in some supercell thunderstorms that produced large hail up to golfball size and multiple tornadoes on the 20th. A squall line developed along the cold front that moved into the area during the morning of the 21st, and that line of storms produced multiple tornadoes along the leading edge. Locally heavy rainfall and subsequent flash flooding occurred across northeastern Oklahoma as multiple rounds of thunderstorms affected generally the same area.

Began near Tulsa (36.1708, -95.9739).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

9 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 823799. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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