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EF3 tornado in Ellis County, Oklahoma

Tornado May 23, 2019 · Ellis County, Oklahoma

EF3

Rating

15.7 mi

Whole path

1,500 yd

Path width

$170K

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Lipscomb County, Texas → Beaver County → Ellis County → Harper County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 1,500 yards (0.85 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF3 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF3 is severe damage: whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, consistent with estimated gusts of 136–165 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 developed in Lipscomb County Texas and moved through Beaver County (see Storm Data entries from the NWS Amarillo in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles) before moving into northwest Ellis County. This tornado was surveyed by meteorologists from both the NWS Norman and Amarillo.

Immediately after moving into Ellis County, a home and outbuilding were completely destroyed. An extended cab pickup truck in a carport at this home was blown 0.3 of a mile northeast with some pieces of the truck found over one half mile northeast of the home. Numerous power poles were snapped both north-south along the county line and east-west along county road 30.

The tornado continued to move northeast and into Harper County southwest of Laverne.

The wider storm

Isolated supercells that developed in the Texas Panhandle and moved into far northwestern Oklahoma with tornadoes and wind reported on the 23rd.

Began near Catesby (36.5739, -100.0032).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF1 Harper County EFU Harper County EFU Harper County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 829978. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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