Tornadoes · United States · North Carolina · 1999
F0 tornado, Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, September 15, 1999
This F0 tornado ran 0.2 miles across Onslow County on September 15, 1999, touching down at 4:11 PM EDT and reaching 10 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 mphthis tornado
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 mph
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
- F0
- Date
- September 15, 1999
- Touchdown
- 4:11 PM EDT (20:11 UTC)
- Path length
- 0.2 miles (0.3 km)
- Path width
- 10 yards (9 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Onslow County
- Touchdown point
- 34.550, -77.400
- Lift-off point
- 34.550, -77.400
- Record number
- 293
What the Weather Service recorded
Between 1108 and 2110 LST on Wednesday, September 15th the Morehead City/Newport office issued 20 tornado warnings. That is an average of two warnings per hour for ten hours. At least ten of the tornadoes were reported by spotters during the event. This tornadic event was the precurser to Hurricane Floyd which made landfall on Thursday, September 16th and caused record flooding across eastern North Carolina.
Tornado reported near Sneads Ferry. It destroyed a pier and knocked down several large trees.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
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.
Newport, NC (KMHX), 12:00Z
8.2 hours before the tornado, 54 km from the path. September 15, 1999.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 392 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -39 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1949 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 956 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 41 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 25 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 177 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 266 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.2
- Supercell composite
- 5.1
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.2 K/km
The surface observations
New_river_mcas (NCA), 18 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 Morehead City radar (KMHX), 54 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:11 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 North CarolinaEvery tornado in North Carolina since 1950Warnings in force in North Carolina nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of September 15, 1999
17 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 15 | 7:24 AM EDT | F0 | Pender, NC | 0.3 | 10 | |||
| September 15 | 10:20 AM EDT | F0 | New Hanover, NC | 2.0 | 10 | |||
| September 15 | 3:20 PM EDT | F0 | New Hanover, NC | 0.2 | 10 | |||
| September 15 | 3:40 PM EDT | F0 | Pitt, NC | 0.2 | 10 | |||
| September 15 | 4:15 PM EDT | F0 | Pamlico, NC | 0.2 | 10 | |||
| September 15 | 4:40 PM EDT | F2 | Carteret, NC | 2.0 | 20 | $300,000 | ||
| September 15 | 5:55 PM EDT | F1 | Carteret, NC | 3.0 | 0 | |||
| September 15 | 7:05 PM EDT | F0 | Carteret, NC | 1.5 | 0 | |||
| September 15 | 7:20 PM EDT | F0 | Washington, NC | 0.2 | 10 | |||
| September 15 | 7:25 PM EDT | F0 | Hyde, NC | 0.2 | 10 | |||
| September 15 | 7:31 PM EDT | F0 | Pamlico, NC | 0.2 | 10 | |||
| September 15 | 7:40 PM EDT | F2 | Pamlico, NC | 10.0 | 50 | $700,000 | ||
| September 15 | 7:40 PM EDT | F0 | Bertie, NC | 0.5 | 50 | $2,000 | ||
| September 15 | 5:13 PM MST | F0 | Yavapai, AZ | 0.0 | 0 | |||
| September 15 | 8:20 PM EDT | F0 | Craven, NC | 6.0 | 20 | |||
| September 15 | 8:35 PM EDT | F0 | Pamlico, NC | 2.0 | 20 | |||
| September 15 | 11:30 PM EDT | F1 | Perquimans, NC | 1.0 | 100 | $120,000 |
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.