F0 tornado, Lake Mills, Wisconsin, September 19, 1997

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.

Rating

F0

Date

September 19, 1997

Touchdown

5:55 PM CDT (22:55 UTC)

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$650,000

County

Jefferson County

Touchdown point

43.080, -88.900

Lift-off point

43.080, -88.900

Record number

518

Severe thunderstorm winds were responsible for scattered tree and power line damage. Hardest hit was Walworth county were a barn was blown off it's foundation near Sharon (Walworth Co) and another out-building damaged. Several other homes around the county experienced expensive lightning damage due to fires. The 911 center in Elkhorn (Walworth Co) was temporarily disabled when lightning destroyed the communications center, forcing the use of a backup system. In addition, lightning struck and injured a woman in Elkhorn as the storms rolled through that city. Heavy rains of 3 to 4 inches caused urban street flooding on the west side of Monroe in Green county with other incidences of urban flooding reported in Racine and Kenosha counties. In the city of Racine (Racine Co), 1.14 inches fell in 30 minutes, while west of New Munster (Kenosha Co), 3.75 inches fell in 3 hours, and resulting in street flooding around New Munster to Twin Lakes (Kenosha Co). Many cars stalled in flooded low spots in both counties. Later in the afternoon a brief tornado touched down on the roof of an east side Lake Mills (Jefferson Cc) factory. About 61000 square feet of the 10 acre roof was damaged.

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

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

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 Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 06:05 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.

The Milwaukee radar (KMKX), 31 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:56 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 WisconsinEvery tornado in Wisconsin since 1950Warnings in force in Wisconsin nowThe forecast where you are

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.