Tornadoes · United States · Arkansas · 1999
F3 tornado, Malvern to Poyen, Arkansas, January 21, 1999
From Malvern to Poyen, this F3 tornado ran 11.0 miles across Hot Spring and Grant counties on January 21, 1999, touching down at 6:18 PM CST and reaching 400 yards wide. It killed nobody.
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 mph
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 mphthis tornado
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
- F3
- Date
- January 21, 1999
- Touchdown
- 6:18 PM CST (00:18 UTC)
- Path length
- 11.0 miles (17.7 km)
- Path width
- 400 yards (366 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Counties
- Hot Spring and Grant counties
- Touchdown point
- 34.300, -92.720
- Lift-off point
- 34.350, -92.670
- Record number
- 98
What the Weather Service recorded
A strong tornado was spawned in eastern Hot Spring County. The tornado moved mostly through rural areas and caused extensive tree damage. In one forested area, there were not many trees left standing as observed during an aerial survey. As the tornado neared Highway 270 about 8 miles east of Malvern, the roof of a chicken house was damaged with a few homes narrowly missed. The tornado then moved northeast into western Grant County.
A strong tornado moved from eastern Hot Spring County into western Grant County. The tornado crossed Highway 270 about 2 miles west of Poyen. Mostly tree damage was noted, with the tornado weakening as it moved northeast. The tornado dissipated northwest of Poyen just before it reached Highway 229.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a High Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 10:55 UTC.
SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.
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.
Shreveport, LA (KSHV), 00:00Z
0.3 hours before the tornado, 227 km from the path. January 22, 1999.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 959 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -14 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1440 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1162 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 47 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 23 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 204 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 299 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 1.1
- Supercell composite
- 7.9
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.3 K/km
The surface observations
Hot Springs (HOT), 41 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 Little Rock radar (KLZK), 69 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:20 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 ArkansasEvery tornado in Arkansas since 1950Warnings in force in Arkansas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of January 21, 1999
85 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 21 | 3:10 PM CST | F1 | Bolivar, MS | 2.0 | 100 | $30,000 | ||
| January 21 | 3:10 PM CST | F1 | Lafayette, AR | 11.1 | 0 | |||
| January 21 | 3:16 PM CST | F1 | Bolivar, MS | 2.0 | 0 | $30,000 | ||
| January 21 | 3:45 PM CST | F0 | Miller, AR | 4.0 | 0 | |||
| January 21 | 3:57 PM CST | F2 | Faulkner, AR | 8.0 | 250 | 7 | ||
| January 21 | 4:29 PM CST | F1 | Dallas, AR | 7.0 | 100 | |||
| January 21 | 4:29 PM CST | F3 | Dallas, AR | 11.0 | 500 | |||
| January 21 | 4:30 PM CST | F1 | Greene, AR | 4.0 | 50 | $70,000 | ||
| January 21 | 4:33 PM CST | F0 | Cross, AR | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 21 | 4:38 PM CST | F3 | White, AR | 19.0 | 700 | 2 | ||
| January 21 | 4:45 PM CST | F0 | Clay, AR | 12.0 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| January 21 | 4:46 PM CST | F2 | White, AR | 16.0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | |
| January 21 | 4:49 PM CST | F1 | Faulkner, AR | 16.0 | 0 | |||
| January 21 | 4:50 PM CST | F0 | Scott, MO | 0.8 | 40 | |||
| January 21 | 4:55 PM CST | F2 | Independence, AR | 20.0 | 500 | 3 | ||
| January 21 | 5:02 PM CST | F3 | Monroe, AR | 16.0 | 200 | 9 | $500,000 | |
| January 21 | 5:05 PM CST | F4 | Clay, AR | 16.0 | 400 | $1.0 million | ||
| January 21 | 5:11 PM CST | F1 | Jefferson, AR | 14.0 | 200 | 4 | $2.0 million | |
| January 21 | 5:25 PM CST | F0 | Lee, AR | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 21 | 5:25 PM CST | F0 | St. Francis, AR | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 21 | 5:30 PM CST | F1 | Jefferson, AR | 16.0 | 0 | |||
| January 21 | 5:32 PM CST | F0 | Butler, MO | 0.3 | 30 | |||
| January 21 | 5:34 PM CST | F1 | Hot Spring, AR | 2.0 | 100 | |||
| January 21 | 5:37 PM CST | F1 | Hot Spring, AR | 4.0 | 100 | |||
| January 21 | 5:38 PM CST | F1 | White, AR | 1.0 | 100 | |||
| January 21 | 5:47 PM CST | F2 | White, AR | 10.0 | 300 | |||
| January 21 | 5:50 PM CST | F0 | New Madrid, MO | 0.3 | 30 | |||
| January 21 | 6:00 PM CST | F0 | Stoddard, MO | 0.2 | 30 | |||
| January 21 | 6:00 PM CST | F0 | Lawrence, AR | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 21 | 6:05 PM CST | F3 | Independence, AR | 31.0 | 0 | $10,000 | ||
| January 21 | 6:05 PM CST | F0 | Dunklin, MO | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 21 | 6:13 PM CST | F2 | Prairie, AR | 7.0 | 250 | |||
| January 21 | 6:15 PM CST | F1 | Scott, MO | 0.8 | 40 | $50,000 | ||
| January 21 | 6:15 PM CST | F0 | St. Francis, AR | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 21 | 6:20 PM CST | F2 | White, AR | 11.0 | 350 | 1 | 3 | |
| January 21 | 6:21 PM CST | F3 | Prairie, AR | 39.0 | 417 | |||
| January 21 | 6:24 PM CST | F3 | Saline, AR | 39.0 | 417 | 3 | 72 | |
| January 21 | 6:35 PM CST | F2 | Alexander, IL | 8.0 | 300 | $170,000 | ||
| January 21 | 6:38 PM CST | F1 | White, AR | 1.0 | 0 | |||
| January 21 | 6:42 PM CST | F2 | Pulaski, AR | 15.0 | 400 | 6 | ||
| January 21 | 6:50 PM CST | F1 | Clay, AR | 1.0 | 0 | $50,000 | ||
| January 21 | 6:54 PM CST | F1 | White, AR | 10.0 | 117 | |||
| January 21 | 7:02 PM CST | F0 | Woodruff, AR | 4.0 | 0 | |||
| January 21 | 7:05 PM CST | F2 | Lawrence, AR | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 21 | 7:11 PM CST | F0 | Sebastian, AR | 0.5 | 50 | |||
| January 21 | 7:13 PM CST | F0 | Union, IL | 0.3 | 30 | $1,000 | ||
| January 21 | 7:15 PM CST | F1 | Morehouse Parish, LA to AR | 27.0 | 200 | $120,000 | ||
| January 21 | 7:18 PM CST | F1 | Lonoke, AR | 2.0 | 200 | 1 | ||
| January 21 | 7:25 PM CST | F3 | White, AR | 8.0 | 1,000 | 2 | 29 | |
| January 21 | 7:25 PM CST | F2 | Clay, AR | 7.0 | 100 | $8.0 million | ||
| January 21 | 7:33 PM CST | F2 | Independence, AR | 7.0 | 400 | |||
| January 21 | 7:45 PM CST | F0 | West Carroll Parish, LA | 2.0 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| January 21 | 7:59 PM CST | F0 | Pulaski, AR | 1.0 | 0 | |||
| January 21 | 8:01 PM CST | F2 | Rapides Parish, LA | 2.0 | 400 | 1 | $1.0 million | |
| January 21 | 8:10 PM CST | F0 | Craighead, AR | 5.0 | 10 | |||
| January 21 | 8:13 PM CST | F2 | Hempstead, AR | 21.1 | 50 | $30,000 | ||
| January 21 | 8:20 PM CST | F1 | Jackson, AR | 9.0 | 100 | 3 | ||
| January 21 | 8:50 PM CST | F0 | Greene, AR | 0.1 | 10 | $10,000 | ||
| January 21 | 8:55 PM CST | F0 | Lawrence, AR | 7.0 | 0 | 1 | $60,000 | |
| January 21 | 9:07 PM CST | F0 | Catahoula Parish, LA | 1.0 | 50 |
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.