EF1 Tornado — Nacogdoches, Texas

2020-01-10 · near Del Rentzel, Nacogdoches, Texas

Event narrative

An EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 100 mph touched down along County Road 723 just south of Farm to Market Road 225, where it snapped several large branches in a field of trees. The tornado tracked east-northeast where it crossed Farm to Market Road 225 and paralleled the north side of the roadway. It snapped and uprooted numerous trees and broke several more large branches as it continued east-northeast. The tornado downed a large tree onto a mobile home along Sweat Circle, a private road off of Farm to Market Road 225, where a 44 year old male was killed and one minor injury was reported. The tornado then crossed County Road 722 and Russelville Road where it resulted in additional tree damage and minor damage to homes. The tornado continued northeast where it crossed County Road 719 and several private properties, damaging a few more trees before lifting near Floyd Harvin Road.

Wider weather episode

An upper level longwave trough emerged out of the Intermountain West and into the Central and Southern Plains during the daytime and evening hours of January 10th. A strong southerly return flow commenced out ahead of the trough during the 8th-9th, allowing for unseasonably warm and humid conditions to advance northward across Southern Oklahoma, much of Central and Eastern Texas, as well as Louisiana, Arkansas, and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Meanwhile, an intensifying surface low pressure system and associated dry line developed along the Red River of North Texas into Southern Oklahoma during the afternoon hours, which spread east northeast across the Ark-La-Tex during the early morning hours on January 11th. With afternoon temperatures climbing into the mid 70s ahead of this trough, moderate instability developed across the broad warm sector, with very strong wind shear in place as large scale forcing increased ahead of the trough axis across East Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, Southwest Arkansas, and North Louisiana. Thus, an axis of strong to severe showers and thunderstorms developed during the evening hours across Southeast Oklahoma, adjacent sections of Southwest Arkansas and East Texas, which advanced east into North Louisiana during the early morning hours of the 11th. Damaging winds downed trees and power lines across portions of East Texas, with even multiple tornadoes touching down along the line of severe thunderstorms. Unfortunately, a man was killed when a tornado touched down west of Nacogdoches and a tree fell on his mobile home. These storms also produced locally heavy rainfall, with amounts of one to three inches, with isolated higher amounts up to four inches recorded across much of this area, resulting in isolated instances of flash flooding. These storms continued to intensify during the late evening and early morning hours as they moved into extreme Eastern Texas and Western Louisiana, producing more in the way of widespread wind damage and isolated tornadoes.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.5832, -94.7558)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 866540. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.