F1 tornado, Snicarte to Bath, Illinois, April 7, 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

April 7, 1998

Touchdown

4:35 PM CDT (21:35 UTC)

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

180 yards (165 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Mason County

Touchdown point

40.200, -90.150

Lift-off point

40.200, -90.150

Record number

196

A tornado touched down 3 miles southwest of Snicarte. It moved a two story frame house three feet off its foundation with its TV antenna wrapped over the top of the house. An exterior wall on the far side of the house was blown off. Some roof and siding damage also occurred with two 3 foot diameter trees next to the house uprooted. Just north of the house 3 outbuildings were destroyed as well as two grain bins. The tornado continued on a northeast track, skipping along the path tipping over some irrigation equipment, destroying another barn, and knocking over numerous large pine trees before dissipating. No injuries were reported and no damage estimate was available.

The tornado touched down on the south side of town and moved north. A frame house received damage to the middle part of the roof and an unattached garage was destroyed. The garage debris was deposited on a neighbor's roof. The tornado continued north through town, snapping off telephone poles and took half the roof off of another house. Debris from this roof was thrown half a mile and landed next to the Illinois River. Exterior walls of this house were also buckled inward up to three feet. Another unattached garage was destroyed, part of the roof of the Bath Firehouse was torn off, and numerous 3 to 4 foot diameter trees were uprooted. Several more homes and businesses sustained minor damage with siding, shingle, and fence damage before the tornado lifted and dissipated. In Bath, nine homes were severely damaged with a total of 43 homes receiving some kind of damage. No injuries were reported and no damage estimate was available.

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

35 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:00 UTC, 35 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:45 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 Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 10:48 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 Lincoln radar (KILX), 69 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:33 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 1998 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

32 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.