F1 tornado, Cedarville, Pennsylvania, April 1, 1998

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

April 1, 1998

Touchdown

2:37 PM EST (19:37 UTC)

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$30,000

County

Chester County

Touchdown point

40.250, -75.650

Lift-off point

40.250, -75.650

Record number

165

A weak tornado (F1 on the Fujita Scale) briefly touched down in North Coventry Township near the Coventry Mall and Pennsylvania State Route 724. It remained on the ground for about half a mile and its path width was about 100 yards. One construction worker suffered minor injuries when some debris was thrown into his face as he was diving under a guardrail. No other injuries were reported. Property damage including damage to the Coventry Mall was estimated at $25,000. About eight homes, mainly on the south side of Pearl Place suffered minor damage. After the tornado touched down near the mall, it moved northeast and crossed Pennsylvania State Route 100. The tornado moved between Pearl Place to its north and Pennsylvania State Route 724 to its south and lifted just before it reached Kline Avenue. The tornado passed just to the north of the North Coventry Elementary School. At the mall, the tornado pulled open several doors and took two clothing racks from a J.C. Penney Store. It knocked down several poles, damaged a 10 foot by 25 foot privacy wall, blew a large trash container through a concrete retaining wall and uprooted eight trees. The tornado also damaged the roof of a Pizza Hut Restaurant, snapped two steel power line towers and cracked seven other utility poles on Pennsylvania State Route 724. As the tornado crossed Pennsylvania State Route 100, it hurled construction debris and street signs and injured one worker. An exit sign was found half a mile away. It then cut a path behind the homes on the south side of Pearl Place. About 40 trees were damaged in the area. One home had numerous shingles pulled from it, another had a tree leaning on it and a third had a shed destroyed. About five other homes also suffered minor damage. Pennsylvania State Routes 724 and 100 remained closed due to debris clean-up through 11 p.m. EST that evening.

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 Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 10:42 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 Philadelphia radar (KDIX), 111 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:37 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 1998 tornado in PennsylvaniaEvery tornado in Pennsylvania since 1950Warnings in force in Pennsylvania nowThe forecast where you are

12 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.