Tornado in Pennsylvania, January 18, 1999

Name: Tornado in Pennsylvania, January 18, 1999
Start: 1999-01-18T13:20
End: 1999-01-18T13:25
Location: Pennsylvania

January 18, 1999 · NWS CTP · 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

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The toll

Deaths: 0
Injuries: 0
Property damage: $50,000
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 national radar mosaic for the moment the first event began.

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Event by event

1 tornado. Local standard time, as filed.

Tornado, Bedford

When: January 18, 1:20 PM EST to 1:25 PM EST
Where: Bedford County, Bedford
Rating: F0
Path length: 2 mi
Path width: 20 yd
Property damage: $50,000
Reported by: EMERGENCY MANAGER
Coordinates: 40.020, -78.500

A small tornado touched down on the north side of Bedford, taking down about a dozen trees and damaging the roofs of a couple of houses. Some of the needle and limb debris from the trees actually made a nice 10 foot circle in the snow next to one home. About 2 miles east of Bedford, a newly built oil change garage had the roof blown off and the bay doors buckled in by the winds. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a rotating column they described as a tornado that caused the damage to the garage. A gas station across the street also had slight damage to the canopy over the pumps.

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 Pennsylvania in 1999 Every state in 1999 This day in weather history The tornado archive for Pennsylvania, 1999 Warnings in Pennsylvania, January 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: 5678895.