F1 tornado, Pitcher, New York, June 2, 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

June 2, 1998

Touchdown

7:53 PM EDT (23:53 UTC)

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$250,000

County

Chenango County

Touchdown point

42.580, -75.850

Lift-off point

42.580, -75.850

Record number

1138

For the second time in three days, a significant severe weather event including tornadoes affected central New York. The primary focusing mechanisms were a strong mid level shortwave trough and surface cold front that approached from the west late in the day and during the evening. As these features encountered an unstable and increasingly moist environment, thunderstorms developed and quickly became severe. Strongly veering winds that increased with height contributed substantially to the development of tornadic supercells. Two tornadoes touched down in central New York in the early evening on the 2nd. Both appeared to be associated with the same cell. The first tornado occurred in extreme eastern Cortland county in the town of Cincinnatus. After the twister's brief initial touchdown, it lifted back into the cloud base for several minutes before descending once again in western Chenango county in the town of Pitcher. Both tornadoes were rated as F1 intensity with fairly narrow damage paths of a quarter mile or less in length and 100 yards or less in width. Very fortunately, structural damage was kept to a minimum as only two houses sustained appreciable damage. Also, there were no injuries directly tied to the tornadoes as both homes were unoccupied and sparsely populated areas were affected. However, damage estimates from Foresty Department personnel still approached a half million dollars as hundreds of trees were cut down. Elsewhere across central New York, damage was fairly widespread from a combination of intense squall line and bow echo complexes as well as isolated supercells. One such supercell cut a lengthy path of wind damage over the Finger Lakes region early in the evening from western Yates county all the way through southern Cayuga county. Hail as large as golf balls was also observed with these storms. The same thunderstorm complex that became tornadic over portions of Cortland and Chenango counties was also responsible for quite a bit of damage from straight line winds. Swaths of downed trees and power lines from downburst type winds were interspersed with tornadic damage from Homer in western Cortland county to Norwich in northern Chenango county. Across the southern tier counties including the western Catskills, severe thunderstorms were more widely separated as a general rule. Yet, there were two areas of concentrated activity. One was from Steuben county eastward through the Elmira/Corning area into Tioga county. Golf ball sized hail and wind gusts estimated at near 80 mph accompanied these storms. A bow echo complex affected an area from Oneonta in southern Otsego county into northern Delaware county with widespread wind damage just after nightfall. By late in the evening, remaining severe thunderstorms had pushed either into the eastern Catskills or northern Pennsylvania as a cold front swept through much of central New York.

The severe cell that had become tornadic just across the county line in eastern Cortland county earlier in the evening remained a tornadic supercell after entering Chenango county. Aerial damage surveys indicate that the tornado was near ground level for a few minutes in the town of Pitcher. A swath of forest was heavily damaged for about a quarter of a mile. Most trees were snapped or sheared off near canopy level. A few trees were completely uprooted or twisted off the ground. Fortunately, no homes were in this vicinity. Foresty Department personnel estimate that hundreds of trees were damaged with fiscal estimates near a quarter of a million dollars.

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

39 minutes of warning. NWS BGM issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:14 UTC, 39 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:15 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 Moderate 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.

Binghamton/Broome (BGM), 43 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Binghamton radar (KBGM), 44 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:52 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 1998 tornado in New YorkEvery tornado in New York since 1950Warnings in force in New York nowThe forecast where you are

36 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.