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EF0 tornado in Harrison County, Texas

Tornado January 11, 2020 · Harrison County, Texas

EF0
Rating
3.0 mi
Path length
100 yd
Path width
$15K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 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

An EF-0 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 85 mph touched down off of County Road 2108 and snapped small and large branches along its path. The tornado crossed Highway 43 where it tore off a wooden front porch and gutters off of a home. It then crossed County Road 2600 before lifting near Farm to Market Road 134 before entering the Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant.

The wider storm

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.

Began near Karnack (32.6402, -94.2112).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 866665. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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