EF2 tornado, Dale, Oklahoma, May 21, 2019

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 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

EF2

Date

May 21, 2019

Touchdown

4:33 AM CDT (09:33 UTC)

Lifted

4:42 AM CDT (09:42 UTC)

On the ground

9 minutes

Path length

2.6 miles (4.2 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Pottawatomie County

Touchdown point

35.387, -97.028

Lift-off point

35.420, -97.014

Record number

1905210333-01

34 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OUN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 127 mph.

• Can observe path through trees across field to the east.
• Clear narrow path crosses here. Shredded trees, which were also blocking road until they were moved. Path begins somewhere within a mile to the west, as no damage was observed on Choctaw Road.
• lots of shredded trees. No damage observe3d on Peeply Road, so the tornado ended within 3/4 miles esat of here.
• tree snapped to north. centerline just N of here

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

An extremely unstable environment led to widespread severe weather across Texas and Oklahoma on the 20th into the morning of the 21st.

This QLCS tornado developed north of Interstate 40 about 1 mile east of Dale and moved north-northwest and then turned northeast to just west of Wolverine Road and Bethel Road. One mobile home was destroyed and several outbuildings were severely damaged on Westech Road near the beginning of the tornado path. Otherwise damage was generally to trees along the path.

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

7 minutes of warning. NWS OUN issued a tornado warning for this county at 09:26 UTC, 7 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 10:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 03:19 UTC and running to 12:00 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:40 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 Norman radar (KTLX), 25 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 09:32 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2019 tornado in OklahomaEvery tornado in Oklahoma since 1950Warnings in force in Oklahoma nowThe forecast where you are

30 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.