Tornado in the Little Rock Area Friday Evening

From the National Weather Service in Little Rock Saturday morning:

You'll find a map and other info at the bottom of this post.

--- original posting ---

Absolutely classic "hook echo" signature of a developing tornado.

A small tornado caused damage southwest of Little Rock earlier this evening. A photo of the tornado is here. 

I became concerned about the storm shortly after 6:30. As there was no tornado warning, I let my Twitter followers know that, while the chances were still low, there was possibly of a tornado. There was no tornado watch, severe thunderstorm watch or tornado warning at that point. 

At this point, there was rotation aloft (the dashed circle) but none in the lower part of the storm. The "significant tornado parameter" was just barely high enough to indicate the potential for a tornado. I wanted my readers to know about the threat. 

By 6:38, seven minutes after the image directly above, we had a hook echo. But, no tornado warning.

6:45pm, there was a clear tornado signature in the velocity data (right). It takes a few moments for radar data to get to the users. 

A started typing a tornado warning for my Twitter followers but the NWS came out with theirs as I was typing so, I went with it!

We know that trees were uprooted by the tornado at 6:49pm and there are unofficial reports of roof damage. I'm sure the NWS will be out tomorrow to survey the area. If so, I'll add their survey to this post.