F1 tornado, Ft Meade to Lake Wales, Florida, February 17, 1998

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 mphthis tornado

   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 mph

   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

F1

Date

February 17, 1998

Touchdown

5:25 AM EST (10:25 UTC)

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10,000

County

Polk County

Touchdown point

27.750, -81.700

Lift-off point

27.750, -81.700

Record number

77

A tornado briefly touched down and damaged the Stokes and Imperial Citrus Nurseries along Stokes Road. Nearly 40 orange trees were uprooted along Stokes Road.

A tornado touched down at Fourth and Johnson Streets in Lake Wales and caused significant roof damage to 25 homes, damaged a few vehicles, downed numerous large tree limbs and power lines along an intermittent path. Five homes in the North Point subdivision incurred moderate roof and lanai damage. One large vehicle was rolled and severely damaged by the tornado before it lifted and dissipated in the Crown Pointe subdivision along Burns Avenue in Lake Wales.

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

26 minutes of warning. NWS TBW issued a tornado warning for this county at 09:59 UTC, 26 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 10:45 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 10:59 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 live radar over the trackEvery 1998 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are

7 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.