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EF1 tornado in Nacogdoches County, Texas

Tornado March 27, 2021 · Nacogdoches County, Texas

EF1
Rating
20.5 mi
Whole path
300 yd
Path width
$75K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Cherokee County → Nacogdoches County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 300 yards (0.17 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

This is a continuation of the Cherokee County tornado. This tornado had weakened to an EF1 as it crossed over into extreme Northwest Nacogdoches County just west of the Sacul community, with estimated maximum winds around 95 mph. The tornado crossed Highway 204, snapping and uprooting several trees, before lifting in a wooded area west of County Road 991 just northwest of the Sacul community.

The wider storm

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.

Began near Sacul (31.8229, -94.9451).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 941301. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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