F1 tornado, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, March 8, 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 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

March 8, 1999

Touchdown

5:57 PM CST (23:57 UTC)

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

County

Tulsa County

Touchdown point

36.050, -95.820

Lift-off point

36.050, -95.800

Record number

794

Summary of events for March 8 1999:A band of moderate to heavy rain moved across the area during the morning of March 8 in association with a warm front out in advance of a low pressure center. The rain brought localized nuisance flooding. Once the morning rains passed, warmer air moved into eastern Oklahoma during the afternoon, and an upper level low with lots of cold air aloft moved into the area. Thunderstorms then erupted late in the afternoon along an eastward moving dryline/cold front. Some of these thunderstorms displayed characteristics of low-precipitation supercells which then produced damaging tornadoes, most notably in McIntosh County and at Broken Arrow in Tulsa County. The Broken Arrow tornado occurred miles behind any radar-indicated thunderstorm activity and was possibly the result of a cold-air funnel under the cold upper low which reached the ground.

A tornado touched down in Broken Arrow in the Turtle Creek subdivision just southwest of 81st Street (Houston Street) and 145th East Avenue (Aspen Avenue). The tornado then moved across Aspen Avenue into the Wedgewood subdivision, crossed 81st Street, nipping the southeast corner of the Aspen Creek subdivision. The tornado finally lifted near Park Grove Cemetery, which is on the north side of 81st Street about halfway between 145th and 161st East Avenue. Sixty homes received at least some minor F0-strength roof damage, but two homes in the Turtle Creek subdivision lost parts of their roofs, causing this tornado to be rated an F1 on the Fujita scale. Three buildings at an apartment complex just east of Aspen lost parts of their roofs, and a window was blown out. This tornado blew over numerous trees and privacy fences. An off-duty NWS employee located about three blocks south of where the tornado lifted reported wind gusts to 60 miles an hour lasting for less than one minute. At 606 PM, an aircraft pilot reported a funnel cloud near Broken Arrow.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

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 20:05 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.

Tulsa/Lloyd Jones (RVS), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

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

6 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.