Tornadoes · United States · South Dakota · 1999
F0 tornado, Spearfish to Belle Fourche, South Dakota, May 15, 1999
From Spearfish to Belle Fourche, this F0 tornado ran 2.0 miles across Lawrence and Butte counties on May 15, 1999, touching down at 4:43 PM MDT and reaching 10 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 mphthis tornado
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 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
- F0
- Date
- May 15, 1999
- Touchdown
- 4:43 PM MDT (22:43 UTC)
- Path length
- 2.0 miles (3.2 km)
- Path width
- 10 yards (9 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Counties
- Lawrence and Butte counties
- Touchdown point
- 44.600, -104.000
- Lift-off point
- 44.570, -104.000
- Record number
- 979
What the Weather Service recorded
Brief Touchdown. Moved into Butte County.
Stayed in open country...moved from Lawrence County into Butte County.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:49 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 surface observations
Belle Fourche (EFC), 20 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 Rapid City radar (KUDX), 106 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:40 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 1999 tornado in South DakotaEvery tornado in South Dakota since 1950Warnings in force in South Dakota nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of May 15, 1999
1 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 15 | 7:02 PM CDT | F1 | Rooks, KS | 3.0 | 50 | $10,000 |
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.