EF2 tornado in Cherokee County, Texas

An EF2 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 120 mph touched down just southwest of Russell Cemetery off of FM 23 south-southwest of the city of Rusk in Cherokee County. The tornado tracked northeast where it crossed Highway 69 with intermittent damage along County Road 1101. The tornado crossed FM 343 and intensified and widened significantly to approximately 500 yards, where several hundred trees were snapped continuously along County Road 1211 and County Road 1209. The tornado then weakened and produced more intermittent damage as it crossed over into extreme Northwest Nacogdoches County just west of the Sacul community.

A longwave trough shifted east out of the Rockies and into the Central and Southern Plains during the day on March 27th, with the southwest flow ahead of the trough ejecting a series of upper level disturbances northeast across Northeast Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and Northwest Louisiana during the afternoon and evening. Meanwhile, a broad warm and moist sector had spread north across all of the Ark-La-Tex into Eastern Oklahoma and much of Arkansas ahead of this trough, with temperatures warming into the upper 70s and lower 80s areawide. This resulted in moderate instability developing as large scale forcing increased during the late afternoon through the evening hours, resulting in scattered to numerous shower and thunderstorm development across much of these areas. Increasing wind shear late in the afternoon also promoted the development of scattered severe thunderstorms over East Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and Northwest Louisiana, with various reports of damaging winds and large hail received. However, one lone supercell developed over Eastern Anderson County Texas, which produced multiple tornadoes along its track from Cherokee County northeast into Northwest Nacogdoches, Southern Rusk, and Southern Panola Counties, before eventually moving into Northern Desoto and Southeast Caddo Parishes in Northwest Louisiana. These storms eventually organized along a broken line as it pushed into North Louisiana, ahead of a cold front that shifted southeast into the area during the early morning hours of the 28th.