F3 tornado, Clarksville, Tennessee, May 4, 2003

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 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 mphthis tornado

   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

F3

Date

May 4, 2003

Touchdown

12:53 AM CDT (05:53 UTC)

Path length

11.5 miles (18.5 km)

Path width

1,000 yards (914 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$750,000

County

Montgomery County

Touchdown point

36.420, -87.350

Lift-off point

36.400, -87.200

Record number

922

A tornado affected the southeast part of Montgomery County and did damage from Roberts Road, to Fredonia and to Albright Road. 108 homes were damaged. Estimated loss is about 3/4 of a million dollars. The tornado destroyed 2 brick homes on state Highway 12 near Fredonia and a mobile home on Albright Rd. One woman was injured in the mobile home. The Frazier family in the brick home took their 3 children to the basement. Their brick home was ripped to pieces and blown into the nearby woods. A man on Roberts Road said 3 large oak trees were ripped out of the ground and thrown on top of his house. A neighbor's garage from about a 1/4 of a mile away landed on the back of his house. Montgomery County EMA reported 108 homes were damaged by the tornado.

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

41 minutes of warning. NWS OHX issued a tornado warning for this county at 05:12 UTC, 41 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 06:15 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:48 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), 27 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The live radar over the trackEvery 2003 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

80 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 81 of them

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.