F0 tornado, Halifax, Pennsylvania, July 22, 2003

1. F040 to 72 mphthis tornado

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

2. F173 to 112 mph

   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

F0

Date

July 22, 2003

Touchdown

4:00 PM EDT (20:00 UTC)

Path length

1.5 miles (2.4 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Dauphin County

Touchdown point

40.470, -76.920

Lift-off point

40.470, -76.920

Record number

506

A team from the National Weather Service office in State College surveyed damage and interviewed residents and emergency management officials in Dauphin county. The team determined that an F0 tornado touched down in Dauphin county around 4:00 pm Tuesday July 22, 2003. The tornado touched down along Route 147 just south of Paxton in Dauphin county. The tornado moved south, with a path was about 1.5 miles long and the width was about 150 yards. The tornado knocked down 2 dozen trees and snapped off an additional dozen trees. The tornado lifted as it moved south but the storm produced large hail. A trailer court just north of Millersburg was hit by golf ball to tennis ball size hail. The north sides of the trailers were dented from the hail and many trailer skirts had holes from the hail. A Ford dealership near Millersburg reported 300 cars damaged by hail. Damage to cars ranged from dents...to broken tail lights...to a few cars with windows broken out by the hail.

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

10 minutes of warning. NWS CTP issued a tornado warning for this county at 19:50 UTC, 10 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:30 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 Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:12 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 State College radar (KCCX), 104 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:59 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 2003 tornado in PennsylvaniaEvery tornado in Pennsylvania since 1950Warnings in force in Pennsylvania nowThe forecast where you are

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.