March 2007 Tornado Outbreak

March 28-29, 2007 Tornado Outbreak

The following pages will provide an overview of the severe weather events that took place across the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles from the afternoon hours on Wednesday, March 28 through Thursday morning on March 29, 2007.

In total, there were 15 tornadoes!
3 - EF 3
4 - EF 2
2 - EF 1
6 - EF 0

This was the largest March tornado outbreak in the history of the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. For storm surveys, click here.

A very dynamic weather pattern brought severe weather, including large tornadoes, to the Central United States starting during the afternoon on Wednesday, March 28 through the early morning hours on Thursday, March 29th. Severe weather reports associated with this pattern extended from southwestern Texas into the Dakotas

On Thursday, March 29, there were 67 tornado reports, 181 hail reports, and 15 wind reports associated with this system. Note that these are simply received reports and DO NOT indicate 67 different tornadoes. Likewise, some of the hail reports were reported by individuals in nearly identical positions. Nonetheless, the current number of confirmed tornadoes is around 41 from the southern Texas Panhandle up into northwestern Nebraska. In addition to the tornadoes, there were numerous reports of golf ball to baseball sized hail with one report of softball sized hail near the Pantex plant, a few miles outside of Amarillo, TX. Straight line winds (not associated with a tornado) produced multiple wind gusts above 60 mph, with a few measurements above 80 mph!

In addition to the tornadoes, hail and winds, many communities were faced with flash flooding as these storms moved over the same areas time after time. This caused flooding in Donley, Gray, and Lipscomb counties where water invaded some homes.

So what caused this widespread severe weather event? The following pages will discuss the large scale synoptic pattern in place and also the small scale environment that helped trigger the tornadoes.

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