Three landspouts spun up near Lubbock as spotters logged four tornado reports in a day

Four tornado reports made it into the Storm Prediction Center’s log for October 28, 2026, and three of them were landspouts on the South Plains of Texas: one 6 SSW of Anton in Hockley County, one 4 SW of Shallowater and one 5 ESE of Shallowater, both in Lubbock County. The fourth, a brief touchdown 3 NNE of Effingham, Illinois, was logged after midnight UTC, hundreds of miles from the Texas trio and under a different part of the day’s storm pattern.

Save more, waste less: The Cool Down’s newsletter sends smart, simple changes that help you and the planet in your everyday life.

Subscribe to The Cool Down →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.

All four entries are local reports. None had been through a National Weather Service damage survey when the log was read, which limits how firmly any of them can be called a confirmed tornado.

Three landspouts logged in Hockley and Lubbock counties

The SPC storm reports page lists the Anton report first, at 2033 UTC, with the remark “Multiple sightings of a weak landspout” and a note that the location was estimated from radar. The wording of “multiple sightings” indicates that more than one observer watched the same column, and “weak” is the reporter’s own description rather than a rating. Thirty minutes later, at 2103 UTC, a second landspout was logged 4 SW of Shallowater, a town just northwest of Lubbock.

At 2111 UTC the third came in from 5 ESE of Shallowater, with the remark that it was observed from Lubbock International Airport. Whether the 2103 and 2111 entries describe two vortices or one funnel seen from different places is not something the log settles, because each report occupies its own line. The count of three is therefore a count of reports, and the number of distinct landspouts could end up lower once local records are reviewed.

Converted to local time, the three Texas entries fall between 3:33 p.m. and 4:11 p.m. Central Daylight Time, in mid-afternoon, while the Effingham touchdown at 0114 UTC corresponds to 8:14 p.m. Central on October 28. All four therefore fall on the same local evening, even though SPC files the last one under the following UTC date within the same storm day.

What separates a landspout from a supercell tornado

The National Weather Service glossary defines a landspout as a tornado “that does not arise from organized storm-scale rotation,” one that is “not associated with a wall cloud (visually) or a mesocyclone (on radar).” It adds that landspouts are typically observed beneath towering cumulus or small thunderstorms, “often as no more than a dust whirl,” and calls them essentially the land-based equivalents of waterspouts.

Over open farmland the visible part may be only a thin rope of dust, and without a mesocyclone the radar has little to flag in advance. A landspout can be a genuine tornado and still be weak, brief and easy to miss, which is why spotter sightings such as the “multiple sightings” at Anton carry most of the weight in a log like this one. The third Shallowater entry, observed from the airport, adds a fixed and well-known vantage point to the record, although the log does not say who made the observation.

An Illinois touchdown relayed through social media

The fourth report was a different kind of entry. It was logged at 0114 UTC, about four hours after the last Texas landspout, 3 NNE of Effingham in Effingham County, Illinois, and its remark reads “Brief tornado touchdown, relayed via social media.” The log gives no tornado type for it, and it carries no path length and no damage note. The same page lists Illinois hail from earlier in the evening, including 2.00-inch hail at Aviston in Clinton County, so a stormy afternoon and evening across the Midwest is the likely backdrop, though the tornado entry itself says nothing more than that a touchdown was relayed.

A preliminary log the weather service can still revise

The day’s running tally stood at 4 tornado reports, 62 hail reports and 53 wind reports, 119 in all. The National Weather Service office in Lubbock is the body that would normally follow up South Plains events through its event archive and damage assessments. No public information statement or event page for October 28 turned up in the version of the office’s front page retrievable for this article, which listed only earlier October storms, so the SPC log is the sole public record found so far for the Lubbock-area sightings.

Precedent for the area is easy to find. On April 30, 2025, the same office issued a special weather statement for a landspout near Anton, moving east at 10 mph, with Shallowater and Lubbock among the listed locations. The product described a landspout and did not mention a tornado, which shows how the weather service words short-fuse alerts for these vortices even when radar signatures are weak.

Under the weather service’s severe weather definitions, a thunderstorm that produces a tornado is classed as severe, whatever the strength of the vortex, so even a weak landspout meets that bar. The October 28 log assigns no rating to any of the four reports, and Enhanced Fujita ratings are assigned only after damage is found and surveyed. For a thin rope of dust over open ground, there may be nothing to rate.

The open question is how the entries will read once local offices finalize them. The three Texas landspouts and the Effingham touchdown stand as reports from spotters, a radar-based location estimate and a social media relay, and the Storm Prediction Center’s tally of four is the number that the final database will either keep or revise.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

Save more, waste less: Subscribe to The Cool Down →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.