F3 tornado, Clarendon to Hawkins, Arkansas, January 21, 1999

1. F040 to 72 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. 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.

7. 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.

Rating

F3

Date

January 21, 1999

Touchdown

5:02 PM CST (23:02 UTC)

Path length

16.0 miles (25.7 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

9

Property damage

$500,000

Counties

Monroe and St. Francis counties

Touchdown point

34.680, -91.270

Lift-off point

35.070, -90.970

Record number

762

A strong tornado was spawned in southern Monroe County. The tornado flipped over a tractor 8 miles south of Brinkley. About 3 miles southeast of Brinkley, the tornado destroyed a home with nothing left but the foundation. As the tornado moved northeast, the tornado damaged some transmission towers. The tornado tracked through much of eastern Monroe County and weakened some before moving into St. Francis County (Memphis County Warning Area) and the Wheatley area.

The tornado moved into the extreme southwest corner of St. Francis county from Monroe county. It touched down several times and then lifted back into the air. The most severe damage occurred in and near Wheatley. Thirteen homes were completely demolished and six other homes sustained structural damage. Further along its path, the tornado hit a farm about 4.5 miles northeast of Wheatley. The farmhouse lost part of its roof. Two or three machine sheds were demolished, several other outbuildings were damaged, grain storage bins were flatted and blown several hundreds of feet away and irrigation equipment suffered extensive damage.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

15 minutes of warning. NWS LZK issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:47 UTC, 15 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:35 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

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 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.

The Little Rock radar (KLZK), 104 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:04 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 1999 tornado in ArkansasEvery tornado in Arkansas since 1950Warnings in force in Arkansas nowThe forecast where you are

85 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 86 of them

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.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.