Thunderstorm Wind — Upshur, Texas

2020-04-12 · near East Mtn, Upshur, Texas

Event narrative

A large tree snapped and fell on a 60 year old male standing in his driveway, fatally injuring him.

Wider weather episode

Warm, moist, and unstable air surged north into East Texas, North Louisiana, and Southern Arkansas during the evening through the early morning hours of April 11th-12th, along a warm front that lifted north across much of East Texas into North Louisiana. Meanwhile, a strong upper level low opened up into a trough as it entered the Southern Plains during the evening of the 11th, with large scale forcing ahead of the trough enhancing shower and thunderstorm development across much of West-central, Central, East and Southeast Texas during the evening through the early morning hours. Given the extent of shear, instability, and upper level forcing in place across the warm sector, numerous showers and thunderstorms developed over these areas, which quickly spread east northeast into East Texas around and shortly after daybreak on the 12th. Some of these storms were severe, producing numerous reports of damaging winds, large hail, and locally heavy rainfall which resulted in isolated flash flooding. Two isolated tornadoes also touched down in Shelby and Southern Harrison Counties.

While there was a lull in the thunderstorms from late morning through much of the afternoon, additional strong to severe thunderstorms developed across portions of Northeast Texas well behind the dry line which had mixed east to near Texarkana into Western Louisiana, and near the center of the upper level trough. Steep lapse rates aloft and the drier low level air mass contributed to areas of damaging winds and isolated instances of large hail, with the majority of the wind damage from a collapsing thunderstorm which originated just east of Dallas, and quickly moved east along the I-20 corridor in East Texas. Aided by strong pressure rises behind an associated cold front, a large swath of damaging winds were noted with the severe gust front, with gusts ranging from 50-70 mph well ahead of the collapsed storm. This resulted in numerous reports of downed trees and power lines across East Texas and Western Louisiana, with AEP Swepco noting that over 64,000 customers were without power at one time in the aftermath of the storms. These damaging winds exited East Texas into Western Louisiana by early evening before gradually weakening.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.5711, -94.8783)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 877419. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.