Tornadoes · United States · Texas · 1997

F0 tornado, Guthrie, Texas, June 16, 1997

This F0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across King County on June 16, 1997, touching down at 7:50 PM CDT 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.

  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.

The record

Rating
F0
Date
June 16, 1997
Touchdown
7:50 PM CDT (00:50 UTC)
Path length
0.1 miles (0.2 km)
Path width
10 yards (9 m)
Deaths
0
Injuries
0
County
King County
Touchdown point
33.470, -100.520
Lift-off point
33.470, -100.520
Record number
876

What the Weather Service recorded

Severe thunderstorms developed during the afternoon of the 16th and continued into the evening. The Hockley County Sheriff''s Office relayed an oil field worker report of a tornado 2 miles east of the intersection of Highway 214 and FM road 1585. Other brief, weak tornadoes were spotted by the King County Sheriff's office 4 miles south of Guthrie, by the Dickens County Sheriff's Office in southwest portions of King County, and by the Kent County Sheriff's Office in northeast Kent County, north-northeast of the town of Jayton. A hail storm during the afternoon in Parmer County caused crop damage to corn, wheat, and milo. Strong winds in the town of Dickens produced some tree damage while strong winds in the city of Childress caused sign damage and knocked over trees and antennas. The roof of the Dickens Electric Cooperative warehouse was destroyed and a tree landed on the hood of a car in the town of Spur. Many trees were blown over in the south part of the town of Dickens.

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

The warnings

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

Issued (UTC)ExpiredProductOffice
00:01 UTC01:05 UTCSevere Thunderstorm WarningLUB

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 forecast that day

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Moderate Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:56 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 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.

Amarillo Airport, TX (KAMA), 12:00Z

11.2 hours after it, 224 km from the path. June 17, 1997.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Amarillo Airport, TX at 12:00Z on 1997-06-17Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 0 joules per kilogram, CIN -68543, lifted condensation level 1524 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km15 km-30°-20°-10°0°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Amarillo Airport, TX at 12:00Z on 1997-06-17The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity 65 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 20 knots.1939Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
0 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
-68543 J/kg
Surface CAPE
0 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
1524 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
20 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
16 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
65 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
65 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
0.0
Supercell composite
0.0
0-3 km lapse rate
3.9 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

The radar

The Lubbock radar (KLBB), 122 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:48 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 1997 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of June 16, 1997

24 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

DateTimeRatingWherePath (mi)Width (yd)DeathsInjuriesDamage
June 166:49 AM CDTF0Johnson, AR0.220
June 161:08 PM CDTF1Colbert, AL3.0501$100,000
June 161:20 PM CDTF0Dallam, TX0.223
June 161:30 PM CDTF0Hartley, TX0.150
June 165:45 PM EDTF1Broward, FL1.0501$1.0 million
June 164:48 PM CDTF0Cochran, TX0.110
June 166:10 PM CDTF0McIntosh, OK0.130
June 166:45 PM CDTF0Haskell, OK0.130
June 167:21 PM CDTF0Warren, KY0.550$10,000
June 167:52 PM CDTF0Kent, TX0.110
June 168:10 PM CDTF1Fisher, TX1.050$30,000
June 169:15 PM EDTF0Bourbon, KY0.550$30,000
June 168:15 PM CDTF0King, TX0.110
June 168:16 PM CDTF0Eastland, TX0.123
June 168:20 PM CDTF0Jones, TX0.113
June 168:58 PM CDTF0Jones, TX0.223
June 169:00 PM CDTF0Okfuskee, OK0.130
June 169:35 PM CDTF0Irion, TX0.113
June 169:35 PM CDTF1Wichita, TX0.760$20,000
June 169:40 PM CDTF0Okmulgee, OK0.130
June 169:50 PM CDTF0Young, TX0.123
June 169:50 PM CDTF1Clay, TX6.5100$150,000
June 1610:10 PM CDTF1Young, TX0.133
June 1610:34 PM CDTF0Schleicher, TX0.113

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.