TornadoLookup

Home / Oklahoma / Tulsa

EF1 tornado in Tulsa County, Oklahoma

Tornado May 21, 2019 · Tulsa County, Oklahoma

EF1
Rating
2.7 mi
Whole path
550 yd
Path width
1
Injury
$125K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Tulsa County → Tulsa County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 550 yards (0.31 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado developed just south of E Pine Street at N Rockford Avenue and moved east. The tornado damaged a number of homes and structures, blew down trees, and snapped two power poles. A man was injured when a large tree fell onto his house. The tornado dissipated just north of E Pine Street near N Oswego Avenue. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in the tornado was 90 to 100 mph.

The wider storm

A strong upper level storm system moved into the Southern Plains from the Rockies on the 20th and 21st. The attendant warm front moved from northern Texas northward into northeastern Oklahoma during the day on the 20th, and then the cold front associated with this storm system moved through eastern Oklahoma during the late evening of the 20th and early morning hours of the 21st. Warm, moist, and very unstable air resided across eastern Oklahoma ahead of this system. This pattern resulted in multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms across eastern Oklahoma from the early afternoon of the 20th through late morning of the 21st. Very strong wind shear coexisting with the strong instability resulted in some supercell thunderstorms that produced large hail up to golfball size and multiple tornadoes on the 20th. A squall line developed along the cold front that moved into the area during the morning of the 21st, and that line of storms produced multiple tornadoes along the leading edge. Locally heavy rainfall and subsequent flash flooding occurred across northeastern Oklahoma as multiple rounds of thunderstorms affected generally the same area.

Began near Tulsa (36.1742, -95.9725).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

9 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 823800. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

Tornadoes near your address

See every tornado that passed near a place you know, measured to its path.