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F3 tornado in Crawford County, Arkansas

Tornado May 4, 1999 · Crawford County, Arkansas

Rating

38.5 mi

Whole path

175 yd

Path width

$97K

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Sequoyah County, Oklahoma → Adair County, Oklahoma → Crawford County → Washington County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 175 yards (0.10 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What F3 means. This tornado was rated on Fujita’s original scale, used until 2007. F3 meant severe damage: whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned; the scale paired it with winds of 158–206 mph, figures later judged too high, especially toward the top of the scale, and revised downward in the Enhanced Fujita scale. Ratings then, as now, came from the damage.

What the National Weather Service wrote

A significant long-track tornado first developed 4 miles west of Short, OK, moving northeast to about 7 miles southwest of Fayetteville, AR. This tornado reached its peak strength as an F3 tornado as it clipped extreme southeast Adair County, OK. This tornado then clipped extreme northwest Crawford County, passing through an unpopulated, forested area in the Ozark National Forest. An aerial survey by NWS personnel just west of the Oklahoma/Arkansas state line west of Natural Dam revealed that every tree in a hardwood forest was completely leveled. Property damage listed with this entry reflects tree damage sustained in Crawford County, while the F-rating reflects the tornado's peak strength in Adair County, OK.

The wider storm

Summary of events for May 4 1999:Following a record tornado outbreak in Oklahoma on May 3-4, a significant severe weather outbreak affected northwest Arkansas on the morning and afternoon of May 4 as a vigorous upper level system continued to move slowly east. While there were many individual storms in the area on May 4, the most outstanding storm of the day was a supercell thunderstorm that spawned a tornado in Sequoyah County, OK, which then moved northeast for 39 miles to near Fayetteville. Other storms produced damaging winds and large hail.

Began near Natural Dam (35.7200, -94.4800).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 5700597. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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