Tornado in Oregon, September 15, 1997

Name: Tornado in Oregon, September 15, 1997
Start: 1997-09-15T19:00
End: 1997-09-15T19:00
Location: Oregon

September 15, 1997 · NWS BOI · 1 event in 1 county or zone

1 tornado, as filed by the National Weather Service.

Where it happened

Every event with a place to put it. Tap one for its entry below.

Tornadoes
Tropical storms and surge
Floods
Wind
Hail
Winter weather
Heat and drought
Cold
Fire, smoke and dust
Marine and coastal
Other

Open the live radar over this ground

The toll

Deaths: 0
Injuries: 0
Property damage: $15,000
Crop damage: None recorded
Events: 1

Deaths and injuries are direct and indirect together, as the offices filed them. Damage is property and crops in the dollars of the year, not adjusted for inflation, and only where an office estimated it.

The radar

The Boise radar (KCBX), 222 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the first event began at 03:00 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment

Event by event

1 tornado. Local standard time, as filed.

Tornado, Harney

When: September 15, 7:00 PM PST
Where: Harney County, 5 mi NE of Burns
Rating: F0
Path length: 0.2 mi
Path width: 50 yd
Property damage: $15,000
Coordinates: 43.630, -118.980

During the evening of September 15th a small tornado struck the ranch of Rick and Judy Hoyt near Burns, Oregon. The short lived tornado twisted and snapped a pine tree, threw large bails of hay, broke a window and damaged power lines around the homestead. A witness in nearby Hines, Oregon reported seeing a funnel cloud around the same time.

What these are

Tornado: A violently rotating column of air in contact with the ground and extending from a thunderstorm, filed with its path, width and Fujita or Enhanced Fujita rating from the damage survey.

After NWS Directive 10-1605, the rules offices file Storm Data by.

The same day elsewhere

Every storm in Oregon in 1997 Every state in 1997 This day in weather history The tornado archive for Oregon, 1997 Warnings in Oregon, September 1997

Sources

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database, compiled from the National Weather Service’s monthly Storm Data. Complete through 2026-06; NCEI adds each month about 75 days after it ends and revises past years a few times a year. Rebuilt 2026-09-24. Each event’s entry at NCEI: 5616841.