Tornadoes · United States · Pennsylvania · 1997
F2 tornado, Union City, Pennsylvania, August 16, 1997
This F2 tornado ran 2.0 miles across Erie County on August 16, 1997, touching down at 6:30 PM EDT and reaching 100 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $500,000 of property damage.
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 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
F2113 to 157 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.
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
- F2
- Date
- August 16, 1997
- Touchdown
- 6:30 PM EDT (22:30 UTC)
- Path length
- 2.0 miles (3.2 km)
- Path width
- 100 yards (91 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $500,000
- County
- Erie County
- Touchdown point
- 41.900, -79.850
- Lift-off point
- 41.900, -79.850
- Record number
- 525
What the Weather Service recorded
A tornado touched down and skipped along its path for several minutes. Twenty mobile homes were damaged and one was destroyed at the Maple Heights Trailer Court. A sixty by eighty foot block building was destroyed. Three houses and one business were damaged. A cornfield was flattened and several trees were downed.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The surface observations
Erie International Airport (ERI), 34 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 Buffalo radar (KBUF), 148 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:29 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 1997 tornado in PennsylvaniaEvery tornado in Pennsylvania since 1950Warnings in force in Pennsylvania nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of August 16, 1997
11 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 16 | 3:00 PM EDT | F1 | Sullivan, PA | 5.0 | 50 | 1 | ||
| August 16 | 3:05 PM EDT | F1 | Sullivan, PA | 2.0 | 50 | |||
| August 16 | 3:10 PM EDT | F1 | Sullivan, PA | 0.5 | 50 | 1 | ||
| August 16 | 6:00 PM EDT | F0 | Medina, OH | 0.5 | 50 | $20,000 | ||
| August 16 | 6:45 PM EDT | F1 | Medina, OH | 0.3 | 100 | $500,000 | ||
| August 16 | 7:09 PM EDT | F0 | Richland, OH | 0.3 | 60 | $10,000 | ||
| August 16 | 7:20 PM CDT | F0 | Washington, KS | 0.8 | 150 | $10,000 | ||
| August 16 | 7:30 PM CDT | F0 | LaPorte, IN | 0.5 | 30 | |||
| August 16 | 7:44 PM CDT | F0 | Warren, IA | 0.2 | 20 | |||
| August 16 | 8:22 PM EST | F0 | Saint Joseph, IN | 0.5 | 30 | |||
| August 16 | 8:25 PM CDT | F0 | Warren, IA | 0.3 | 23 | $1,000 |
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.