Tornadoes · United States · Texas · 1996
F2 tornado, De Soto to Seagoville, Texas, January 17, 1996
From De Soto to Seagoville, this F2 tornado ran 0.5 miles across Dallas County on January 17, 1996, touching down at 10:40 PM CST and reaching 50 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $750,000 of property damage.
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 mph
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 mphthis tornado
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
- F2
- Date
- January 17, 1996
- Touchdown
- 10:40 PM CST (04:40 UTC)
- Path length
- 0.5 miles (0.8 km)
- Path width
- 50 yards (46 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $750,000
- County
- Dallas County
- Touchdown point
- 32.600, -96.750
- Lift-off point
- 32.600, -96.750
- Record number
- 19
What the Weather Service recorded
A supercell thunderstorm embedded within a squall line that moved through Dallas County produced 7 short track tornadoes and a downburst in the southern portion of the county. Substantial damage occurred in the Desoto and Lancaster areas with an estimated $1.5 million in damage to businesses, homes and public buildings. An in-depth damage survey revealed 7 individual tracks in Dallas County and one more in Kaufman County.Tornado number 1 developed near Westmoreland Road/Woodland Hill and lifted at the intersection of Belt Line Road and I-35 where an 18 wheeler was blown over.
Tornado number two developed near I-35/Idlewild Ct. and lifted near Marsalis/Pleasant Run Rd.
Tornado number three touched down near Springmont/Pleasant Run Rd. and lifted near Alicia/Prescott.
Tornado number four touched down near Donlee/Sunny Meadow and lifted near Dallas Ave./Stanford.
Tornado number seven touched down near LBJ/175 and moved into Kaufman County.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The air that afternoon
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.
Fort Worth, TX (KFWD), 00:00Z
4.7 hours before the tornado, 57 km from the path. January 18, 1996.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 320 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -52 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 101 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1337 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 82 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 38 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 428 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 374 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.5
- Supercell composite
- 2.9
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.7 K/km
The surface observations
Dallas/Redbird Airport (RBD), 14 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 Dallas/Ft Worth radar (KFWS), 52 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:42 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 1996 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of January 17, 1996
8 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 17 | 9:55 PM CST | F2 | Fannin, TX | 2.5 | 150 | 5 | $150,000 | |
| January 17 | 10:33 PM CST | F1 | Dallas, TX | 3.0 | 50 | 1 | $750,000 | |
| January 17 | 10:42 PM CST | F1 | Dallas, TX | 1.5 | 50 | |||
| January 17 | 10:43 PM CST | F1 | Dallas, TX | 1.2 | 50 | |||
| January 17 | 10:47 PM CST | F0 | Dallas, TX | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 17 | 10:47 PM CST | F0 | Dallas, TX | 2.0 | 50 | |||
| January 17 | 10:50 PM CST | F1 | Dallas, TX | 5.0 | 50 | |||
| January 17 | 11:00 PM CST | F1 | Kaufman, TX | 4.0 | 50 |
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.