Tornadoes · United States · Alabama · 1999
F0 tornado, Southside, Alabama, February 27, 1999
This F0 tornado ran 1.3 miles across Etowah County on February 27, 1999, touching down at 7:51 PM CST and reaching 50 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $30,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
F040 to 72 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
F2113 to 157 mph
Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.
F3158 to 206 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
F4207 to 260 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
F5261 to 318 mph
Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.
Unrated
The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.
The record
- Rating
- F0
- Date
- February 27, 1999
- Touchdown
- 7:51 PM CST (01:51 UTC)
- Path length
- 1.3 miles (2.1 km)
- Path width
- 50 yards (46 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $30,000
- County
- Etowah County
- Touchdown point
- 33.950, -86.080
- Lift-off point
- 33.930, -86.050
- Record number
- 153
What the Weather Service recorded
A weak tornado touched down just inside the Etowah County line near Southside. The tornado caused some minor damage to a house and knocked a few trees down on Babe Jackson Road then crossed H. Neely Henry Lake on the Coosa River. On the eastern bank of the lake, the roof was torn off one mobile home and minor damage occurred to several other homes and outbuildings. Several trees were uprooted in the area.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The air that afternoon
The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.
Birmingham, AL (KBMX), 00:00Z
1.9 hours before the tornado, 107 km from the path. February 28, 1999.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 412 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -3 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 574 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 672 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 37 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 36 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 304 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 393 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.8
- Supercell composite
- 4.3
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.0 K/km
Birmingham, AL (KBMX), 12:00Z
10.1 hours after it, 107 km from the path. February 28, 1999.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -70547 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 43 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1056 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 73 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 28 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -204 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- -78 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.6 K/km
The surface observations
Gadsden Municipal (Awos) (GAD), 4 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Birmingham radar (KBMX), 108 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:52 UTC.
Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track
Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 1999 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of February 27, 1999
8 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 27 | 12:05 PM CST | F0 | Madison, IL | 0.2 | 50 | |||
| February 27 | 3:25 PM CST | F3 | Lawrence, MS | 17.0 | 440 | $200,000 | ||
| February 27 | 4:00 PM CST | F1 | Union, KY | 3.0 | 100 | 2 | $200,000 | |
| February 27 | 5:50 PM CST | F0 | Lawrence, MS | 1.0 | 50 | $30,000 | ||
| February 27 | 5:55 PM CST | F2 | Lauderdale, AL | 1.7 | 150 | $140,000 | ||
| February 27 | 6:25 PM CST | F0 | Winston, AL | 0.5 | 30 | $10,000 | ||
| February 27 | 7:15 PM CST | F2 | Blount, AL | 0.4 | 50 | 1 | $90,000 | |
| February 27 | 11:00 PM CST | F1 | Saint Charles Parish, LA | 0.8 | 0 | $100,000 |
What this means
Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.