Name: Tornado in Iowa, May 16, 1999
Start: 1999-05-16T15:16
End: 1999-05-16T15:16
Location: Iowa

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

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The toll

Deaths: 2
Injuries: 16
Property damage: $1.9 million
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 Omaha radar (KOAX), 52 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the first event began at 21:17 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment

Event by event

1 tornado. Local standard time, as filed.

Tornado, Harrison

When: May 16, 3:16 PM CST
Where: Harrison County, Missouri Vly to 3 mi NE of Missouri Vly
Rating: F3
Path length: 7.5 mi
Path width: 440 yd
Deaths: 2 direct, 0 indirect
Injuries: 16 direct, 0 indirect
Property damage: $1.9 million
Reported by: TRAINED SPOTTER
Coordinates: 41.600, -95.870

The stronger of the 2 tornadoes that ripped through Harrison county the afternoon of 5/16/99 killed 2 people and destroyed 6 homes and a bridge before it dissipated a couple of miles east of Logan. A family of 5 leaving a high school graduation party encountered the tornado on a road around 6 miles northeast of Missouri Valley and took cover in a ditch about the time the path of the tornado widened to a quarter mile. Two of them were killed after their car and a 3-ton combine head were thrown on them. There were also numerous flipped or smashed vehicles in this area.

The people who died

As the offices recorded each death: direct deaths were caused by the weather itself, indirect ones by something it set in motion.

Event	Date	Age	Sex	Where	Kind
Tornado, Harrison	1999-05-16	15	Female	Outside/Open Areas	Direct
Tornado, Harrison	1999-05-16	37	Female	Outside/Open Areas	Direct

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

More

Every storm in Iowa in 1999 Every state in 1999 This day in weather history The tornado archive for Iowa, 1999 Warnings in Iowa, May 1999

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: 5697090.