Tornadoes · United States · Pennsylvania · 1996
F1 tornado, Sickles Corner, Pennsylvania, July 19, 1996
This F1 tornado ran 1.5 miles across Blair County on July 19, 1996, touching down at 12:10 PM EDT and reaching 880 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 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mphthis tornado
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
- F1
- Date
- July 19, 1996
- Touchdown
- 12:10 PM EDT (16:10 UTC)
- Path length
- 1.5 miles (2.4 km)
- Path width
- 880 yards (805 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Blair County
- Touchdown point
- 40.570, -78.300
- Lift-off point
- 40.550, -78.280
- Record number
- 884
What the Weather Service recorded
Shortly after 11:00 a.m. EST, an F1 tornado touched down northeast of Altoona approximately 1 mile northwest of Sickles Corner on Brush Mountain. This tornado moved southeast taking down a swath of trees and causing minor damage to homes along a 1.5 mile path before ending one half mile southeast of Sickles Corner. The path width averaged about one half mile wide. This storm was the fourth in the family of tornadoes that had crossed Clarion, Jefferson, Indiana, Clearfield and Cambria counties.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
43 minutes of warning. NWS CTP issued a tornado warning for this county at 15:27 UTC, 43 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 16:15 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09:09 UTC | 10:15 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | CTP |
| 09:09 UTC | 10:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | CTP |
| 09:56 UTC | 13:00 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | CTP |
| 14:58 UTC | 18:00 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | CTP |
| 15:27 UTC | 16:15 UTC | Tornado Warning | CTP |
| 15:55 UTC | 16:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | CTP |
| 16:30 UTC | 17:15 UTC | Tornado Warning | CTP |
| 16:46 UTC | 20:00 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | CTP |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 06:17 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 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.
Pittsburgh, PA (KPIT), 12:00Z
4.2 hours before the tornado, 154 km from the path. July 19, 1996.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1573 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -15 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1350 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 639 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 41 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 39 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 259 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 257 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 2.1
- Supercell composite
- 10.5
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.1 K/km
Pittsburgh, PA (KPIT), 00:00Z
7.8 hours after it, 154 km from the path. July 20, 1996.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -10 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 54 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1047 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 42 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 17 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 44 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 70 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.2 K/km
The surface observations
Altoona/Blair Co. (AOO), 29 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14:50 UTC | 73.4 | 71.6 | 210° 7 kt | 1007.5 | ||
| 15:51 UTC | 77 | 73.4 | 210° 10 kt | 15 | 1006.8 | BR |
| 16:29 UTC | 200° 12 kt | |||||
| 16:54 UTC | 77 | 73.4 | 200° 10 kt | 16 | 1004.1 | TS BR |
| 17:20 UTC | 71.6 | 71.6 | 340° 12 kt | 1006.1 | +TSRA +SHRA FG | |
| 17:30 UTC | 71.6 | 71.6 | 250° 5 kt | 1005.8 | TS | |
| 17:50 UTC | 73.4 | 73.4 | 180° 7 kt | 1005.8 |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The State College radar (KCCX), 47 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 16:11 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 1996 tornado in PennsylvaniaEvery tornado in Pennsylvania since 1950Warnings in force in Pennsylvania nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of July 19, 1996
19 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 19 | 10:20 AM EDT | F2 | Clarion, PA | 10.0 | 100 | $50,000 | ||
| July 19 | 10:45 AM EDT | F2 | Jefferson, PA | 27.4 | 200 | 6 | $200,000 | |
| July 19 | 12:10 PM EDT | F2 | Cambria, PA | 6.0 | 100 | |||
| July 19 | 1:30 PM EDT | F0 | Bedford, PA | 5.0 | 50 | |||
| July 19 | 2:00 PM EDT | F0 | Fulton, PA | 2.0 | 50 | |||
| July 19 | 2:30 PM EDT | F1 | Franklin, PA | 3.0 | 50 | |||
| July 19 | 2:35 PM EDT | F1 | Adams, PA | 1.0 | 150 | |||
| July 19 | 3:02 PM EDT | F0 | Washington, MD | 2.0 | 75 | $10,000 | ||
| July 19 | 3:12 PM EDT | F2 | Washington, MD | 2.0 | 125 | $400,000 | ||
| July 19 | 2:20 PM CDT | F1 | Frederick, MD to VA | 6.2 | 200 | $130,000 | ||
| July 19 | 3:25 PM EDT | F1 | Preston, WV | 0.2 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| July 19 | 3:36 PM EDT | F1 | Montgomery, MD | 0.5 | 150 | |||
| July 19 | 3:42 PM EDT | F3 | Carroll, MD | 2.2 | 350 | 3 | $5.0 million | |
| July 19 | 2:48 PM CDT | F0 | Montgomery, MD to VA | 2.0 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| July 19 | 3:55 PM EDT | F1 | Baltimore, MD | 1.2 | 50 | $70,000 | ||
| July 19 | 4:30 PM EDT | F0 | City of Baltimore, MD | 0.1 | 25 | |||
| July 19 | 3:04 PM MDT | F0 | Sherman, KS | 0.2 | 10 | |||
| July 19 | 6:00 PM EDT | F1 | Russell, VA | 3.6 | 50 | $200,000 | ||
| July 19 | 7:40 PM CDT | F0 | Franklin, MO | 0.1 | 50 |
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.