Weather Service Releases Details on Saturday’s Tornado in Chireno

After spending much of the day Sunday surveying the tornado damage in and around Alto, investigators with the National Weather Service from Shreveport on Monday traveled to the Chireno area to take a look at the damage there.  The meteorological crew issued a report that stated that an EF-1 tornado with top winds of 95 mph, touched down for about one minute, covering about 1 mile just southwest of Chireno.

Here is the official narrative from the NWS concerning Saturday's tornado:

This tornado touched down along County Road 442 a few miles southwest of Chireno, where numerous trees were snapped or uprooted in a heavily wooded area, while continuing northeast. The tornado lifted just east of the town of Chireno, although the rear flank downdraft from this storm tore off a 100 ft section of tin roofing from a vacant chicken house just off of County Road 442. Portions of the roofs from three other vacant chicken houses were partially lifted up about two inches. Damaging straight line winds of 80-85 mph from this same storm uprooted a tree in front of the ChirenoISD building on Main Street, with numerous trees downed in a north northeasterly direction along Highway 27 about 1-2 miles east of Chireno near the San Augustine County line.

No injuries were reported from this tornado.