EF1 tornado in De Soto Parish, Louisiana

An EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 110 mph touched down near Red Lick Road, where it snapped large limbs and uprooted several hardwood and softwood trees. The tornado then weakened as it continued to snap limbs before crossing over the International Paper Mill. The tornado re-strengthened and widened to nearly 300 yards as it snapped and uprooted hundreds of trees before crossing Bayou Pierre into Northwest Red River Parish.

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, and into North Louisiana during the mid and late morning hours. Some of these storms were severe, producing numerous reports of damaging winds, large hail, and tornadoes. In all, nine tornadoes touched down across North Louisiana, including two EF-3 tornadoes with estimated maximum winds near 140 mph which tore through the southern sections of West Monroe through Central and Eastern Monroe, as well as just southwest of Sterlington in Northern Ouachita Parish.

While there was a lull in the thunderstorms during 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 into Western Louisiana. 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 diminished across Western Louisiana by mid-evening.