Tornadoes · United States · Texas · 1997
F1 tornado, Dayton to Liberty, Texas, October 23, 1997
From Dayton to Liberty, this F1 tornado ran 3.0 miles across Liberty County on October 23, 1997, touching down at 3:47 PM CDT and reaching 440 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $50,000 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 mphthis tornado
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
- F1
- Date
- October 23, 1997
- Touchdown
- 3:47 PM CDT (20:47 UTC)
- Path length
- 3.0 miles (4.8 km)
- Path width
- 440 yards (402 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $50,000
- County
- Liberty County
- Touchdown point
- 29.980, -94.970
- Lift-off point
- 30.020, -94.930
- Record number
- 1122
What the Weather Service recorded
Trees down and minor structural damage.
Trees blown down and minor roof damage.
Trees blown down.
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 Moderate Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:46 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.
Lake Charles Mun, LA (KLCH), 12:00Z
8.8 hours before the tornado, 169 km from the path. October 23, 1997.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 4 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -174 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 826 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 42 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 15 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 112 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 151 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.1
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.4 K/km
Lake Charles Mun, LA (KLCH), 00:00Z
3.2 hours after it, 169 km from the path. October 24, 1997.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 880 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -3 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 900 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 853 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 45 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 20 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 124 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 173 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.7
- Supercell composite
- 3.4
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.9 K/km
The surface observations
Houston Intercontinental (IAH), 40 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 Houston radar (KHGX), 60 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:47 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 October 23, 1997
21 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 23 | 4:30 AM CDT | F1 | Mitchell, TX | 0.1 | 20 | $100,000 | ||
| October 23 | 2:00 PM CDT | F1 | Fort Bend, TX | 3.0 | 440 | $1.1 million | ||
| October 23 | 3:22 PM CDT | F1 | Walker, TX | 2.0 | 50 | $150,000 | ||
| October 23 | 3:32 PM CDT | F2 | Harris, TX | 7.0 | 440 | $150,000 | ||
| October 23 | 3:43 PM CDT | F0 | Austin, TX | 0.2 | 23 | $10,000 | ||
| October 23 | 4:07 PM CDT | F0 | Liberty, TX | 2.0 | 23 | $10,000 | ||
| October 23 | 4:25 PM CDT | F0 | Liberty, TX | 0.2 | 23 | $10,000 | ||
| October 23 | 5:00 PM CDT | F2 | Montgomery, TX | 5.0 | 440 | 1 | $180,000 | |
| October 23 | 5:10 PM CDT | F1 | San Jacinto, TX | 20.0 | 440 | $30,000 | ||
| October 23 | 5:15 PM CDT | F0 | San Jacinto, TX | 2.0 | 50 | $20,000 | ||
| October 23 | 5:22 PM CDT | F0 | Montgomery, TX | 0.2 | 23 | $10,000 | ||
| October 23 | 5:30 PM CDT | F1 | Montgomery, TX | 4.0 | 100 | $90,000 | ||
| October 23 | 6:20 PM CDT | F0 | Nacogdoches, TX | 11.0 | 150 | |||
| October 23 | 6:35 PM CDT | F0 | Polk, TX | 10.0 | 23 | $10,000 | ||
| October 23 | 6:45 PM CDT | F1 | Tyler, TX | 3.0 | 20 | $70,000 | ||
| October 23 | 7:30 PM CDT | F1 | Jasper, TX | 5.0 | 20 | 2 | $100,000 | |
| October 23 | 8:25 PM CDT | F2 | Beauregard Parish, LA | 4.0 | 200 | 4 | $500,000 | |
| October 23 | 8:55 PM CDT | F1 | Beauregard Parish, LA | 5.0 | 20 | $30,000 | ||
| October 23 | 12:15 AM CDT | F1 | Jefferson, MS | 1.5 | 40 | $30,000 | ||
| October 23 | 12:45 AM CDT | F1 | Claiborne, MS | 1.5 | 40 | $20,000 | ||
| October 23 | 12:50 AM CDT | F0 | Jefferson Davis Parish, LA | 5.0 | 10 | $30,000 |
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.