FARMERVILLE, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – The tornado that badly damaged a Farmerville apartment complex and wiped out a neighboring trailer park Tuesday night packed powerful 140 mph winds that put it at an EF-3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, according to the National Weather Service.
Tornadoes are measured using the EF Scale based on damage intensity, which can range from an EF-0 to an EF-5.
An EF3 tornado is classified as strong, with winds of 136-165 miles per hour, causing severe damage, including destruction to roofs and some walls torn from well-constructed houses; trains overturned; most trees in forested areas uprooted; heavy cars lifted and thrown.
The strong tornado initially touched down along Spring Lake Road in the Bayou D’Arbonne Lake area at 8:23 p.m. and stayed on the ground for more than nine miles, destroying about 10 homes as it tore through Farmerville before lifting up near Sweet Lily Road at 8:34 p.m.
“It happened quick,” Farmerville Mayor John Crow told the Associated Press, adding about 30 homes also were damaged along nearby Lake D’Arbonne.
According to the National Weather Service, a total of 14 people were injured in all, two of them critically.
Storm survey teams determined the destructive tornado tracked northeast, uprooting hardwood and softwood trees. Some trees fell on homes and caused structural damage. The twister then briefly moved over the lake before crossing Hwy 2, where several homes were heavily damaged, and at least a few shops and outbuildings were destroyed.
It would have required peak wind speeds of 130 mph to do the kind of damage surveyors found on the hardest-hit structure. The storm wiped out much of the upper level of the two-story home. Two were injured at that location.
The tornado then tracked over a small portion of the lake again before coming ashore and moving across Corney Creek Drive and Dozier Road, where several more homes were damaged by falling trees, and one cabin was mostly destroyed by a combination of falling trees and wind forcing.
From there, the NWS says the tornado tracked over a nearly two-mile span to where the survey team had no access, but they say a tornado debris signature on radar gives them confidence the circulation remained on the ground. It grew to a width of about 500 yards my the time it crossed Denton road, where surveyors found “a multitude of EF-2 damage indicators” and four heavily damaged or destroyed homes. A mobile home was also tossed and destroyed, but no injuries were reported. A few other homes also suffered damage to roofs and walls, and the survey crews note there was “extreme tree damage,” with at least a few trees exhibiting debarking.
Significant tree damage continued to the northeast as the tornado crossed Hwy 15 and moved across Camp Road. This is where they say the most significant damage from the storm took place, as the 400 to 500-yard-wide tornado struck an apartment complex and the mobile home park ext door.
Most of the mobile homes were tossed and destroyed.
While the NWS team believes the strongest core of the tornadic winds only clipped the south end of the apartment complex, the winds were powerful enough to tear the roof off, along with some exterior walls. They say that kind of damage would have taken winds of up to 140 mph, making it an EF-3 at that point, with “widespread mid to strong EF-2 damage occurring throughout the area.”
