Blog Article
October 29, 2026 Texas Tornado Recap: Uvalde County Outbreak
Recap of the October 29, 2026 tornado outbreak near Uvalde and Kinney counties, Texas, plus coastal flooding and Tropical Storm Vance's final hours.
October 29, 2026 Tornado Recap: Five Confirmed Near Uvalde, Texas
Alright folks, let's talk about Wednesday evening in the Texas Hill Country, because that's where the real story was. Between 6:04 and 6:54 PM Central time, NWS Austin/San Antonio logged five separate tornado reports stacked up across Kinney and Uvalde counties, the kind of tight cluster that tells you one storm cell was doing a whole lot of rotating in a short window.
How the Day Unfolded
The morning and early afternoon were quiet on the severe side. Charleston, South Carolina dealt with a king tide that closed Washington Street from Laurens to Society around midday, and by early afternoon Palm Beach County emergency managers had shut down A1A between Boynton Beach and Lantana as the Lake Worth gauge ran moderate flooding through the high tide cycle. That's just astronomical tides doing their thing this time of year, nothing exotic, but real enough to close real roads.
Out west, dense fog socked in western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and southwestern Nebraska, with visibility dropping under 100 feet in spots. Not severe weather, but absolutely the kind of thing that causes pileups if you're not paying attention on the interstate.
Things started escalating by mid-afternoon. Flash Flood Warnings went up over burn scar terrain in Lincoln County, New Mexico, and across urban and desert zones in northeastern El Paso County and parts of southern New Mexico, as slow-moving storms dumped heavy rain on ground that doesn't handle it well. Out in Hawaii, radar was showing rainfall rates up to 3 inches an hour over Maui and Hawaii County, and there were unverified scanner reports of water across Highway 19. We'll call that one early and unconfirmed until better reporting comes in.
Around 4 PM local in central Indiana, an emergency manager near Galveston reported snapped utility poles and minor traffic light damage from thunderstorm wind. Isolated, but it did damage.
Then came the main event. Starting around 6:04 PM Central, a storm moving through western Uvalde County produced a tornado near the intersection of US 90 and RM 1022, caught on public video. Over the next 50 minutes, NWS personnel confirmed tornado debris signatures on radar at four more locations: 15 south of Montell, 13 southwest of Montell, 7 east of Alamo Village, and 4 northeast of Alamo Village. That's five tornado reports tied to what looks like one long-track, debris-producing supercell working through sparsely populated ranch country in Kinney and Uvalde counties.
What We Can Confirm
- Five tornado reports logged by NWS Austin/San Antonio (EWX) between 11:04 PM and 11:54 PM UTC (6:04 to 6:54 PM Central) in Kinney and Uvalde counties, Texas.
- Four of the five had radar tornado debris signatures (TDS) noted by NWS personnel: near Alamo Village (x2) and near Montell (x2).
- One report came from public video near US 90 and RM 1022 in western Uvalde County, with the time estimated off radar.
- Wind damage reported near Galveston, Indiana: snapped utility poles and minor traffic light damage.
- Coastal flooding closed Washington Street in Charleston, SC, and A1A between Boynton Beach and Lantana, FL, during astronomical high tides. Fort Pulaski, GA gauge hit 9.64 ft MLLW and Charleston Harbor hit 7.77 ft MLLW, both notable tidal levels for this time of year.
- Flash Flood Warnings covered burn scars in Lincoln County, NM, and urban/desert terrain in far west Texas and southern New Mexico.
- Tropical Storm Vance weakened to a depression and then degenerated into a post-tropical remnant low off Mexico's west coast, as expected.
We don't have confirmed EF-ratings on any of the five Texas tornadoes yet. Damage surveys take time, and until the National Weather Service publishes one, we're not going to guess at a number.
Forecast Versus Reality
Here's the honest accounting. The forecast conversation heading into Wednesday was mostly about Tropical Storm Vance's remnants and a building flood threat for the Southwest this coming weekend, not about a tornado risk in the Hill Country. On the Vance side, the call was dead on. The National Hurricane Center's final advisory had the system 190 miles southwest of Mazatlan with 30 mph winds and no defined center, and that's exactly how it played out, fading into a post-tropical remnant low.
But the Uvalde-Kinney County tornado cluster wasn't something we had flagged ahead of time in this space. That's worth saying plainly. Late-October severe weather in south-central Texas can spin up fast along a strengthening dryline or front, and Wednesday's storm did exactly that, catching a stretch of ranch country with very little warning lead time built into the broader forecast narrative. The lesson for us and for SPC forecasters alike: shoulder-season setups over the Hill Country deserve more attention even when the headline story that week is tropical and out west.
What's Coming Next
The pattern now shifts squarely to flooding, not tornadoes. WPC has a Slight Risk of excessive rainfall up today across central and eastern Arizona, southern Utah, and southwestern New Mexico, and that risk holds through Saturday as Pacific moisture gets pulled northeast ahead of an approaching trough. Sunday is the one to watch: WPC has posted a Moderate Risk of excessive rainfall for the Four Corners region, specifically targeting the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado, where terrain could wring out 18 hours of steady heavy rain.
SPC has a Marginal Risk of isolated severe wind and hail over Arizona today, shifting into central and eastern New Mexico and small parts of West Texas by Sunday. Separately, NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center expects a G1 minor geomagnetic storm on Halloween as a coronal hole stream arrives, which could put the aurora within view of some northern states after dark, though that's a sky-watching note, not a severe weather one.
Bottom Line
Wednesday's headline was a fast, debris-confirmed tornado cluster in the Uvalde-Kinney County corridor of Texas, five reports in under an hour from what appears to be one long-lived supercell. No EF-ratings are in yet, so hold off on repeating any damage-intensity claims until NWS finishes its survey. Add in king tide flooding on both coasts and the quiet exit of Tropical Storm Vance, and it was a busy, multi-hazard day even without a headline tropical system. The takeaway for forecast trust: the tropical and Southwest flood story was right on track, but this reminds us that Hill Country convection in late October can produce real tornadoes even when the week's forecast attention is pointed somewhere else entirely.