F1 tornado, Ft Campbell to Oak Grove, Tennessee, June 17, 1997

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

June 17, 1997

Touchdown

7:13 PM CDT (00:13 UTC)

Path length

1.7 miles (2.7 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

2

Property damage

$330,000

Counties

Montgomery and Christian counties

Touchdown point

36.630, -87.470

Lift-off point

36.670, -87.430

Record number

454

A tornado touched down on the Tennessee side of Ft. Campbell, about a mile from the Kentucky border. The tornado tore into some buildings in the vicinity of the Directorate of Logistics, which is just inside of Gate 3 and near the Florence A. Blanchfield Army Community Hospital. It took some paneling off a few buildings and tore the siding off a multi-purpose warehouse. The tornado left Ft. Campbell via Gate 3, taking with it some tents that had been hanging out to dry. Most of this account of the tornado came from the Leaf-Chronicle newspaper in Clarksville.This tornado did not form from a supercell thunderstorm. The dynamics of this tornado were similar to a landspout.The path length and path width are approximations.

Several eyewitnesses including at least a half dozen policemen or firemen had nearly identical reports of very narrow rope shaped vortices descending to the ground briefly. There were at least two separate occurrences in the Oak Grove area with another occurring adjacent to the Fort Campbell air field. A 52 MPH wind was reported at the air field, although it was not thought to be in the direct path of the funnel cloud. Some descriptions sounded like the funnel clouds formed in conjunction with towering cumulus clouds instead of cumulonimbus clouds (thunderstorms). Nobody remembered hearing any thunder although a minority reported some rain. A television station in Hopkinsville obtained videotape of the Oak Grove tornado. The primary damage was in a mobile home park, where a mobile home was overturned and destroyed. Two occupants of the mobile home were slightly injured, but did not require treatment at any hospital. Other mobile homes in the park were slightly damaged. An estimated 130,000 dollars damage occurred at the Fort Campbell Army Post due to a brief funnel touchdown. Most of the damage at the base occurred in the shop area of the Directorate of Logistics building, where it tore off the roof, exposing expensive test equipment. The upper part of a wall in an adjacent building was damaged.

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

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 06:14 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.

Clarksville/Outlaw (CKV), 4 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Ft Campbell radar (KHPX), 18 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:13 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 1997 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

8 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.