Oklahoma tornado outbreak
The Oklahoma tornado outbreak of May 3, 1999, was a catastrophic weather event characterized by an unprecedented number of tornadoes across the state and parts of Kansas. Initially, the Storm Prediction Center issued a slight risk warning, which escalated to a high risk as conditions worsened throughout the day. The most powerful tornado, rated F5 on the Fujita scale, touched down in Grady County and later traversed through communities including Moore and Oklahoma City, achieving a maximum wind speed of 301 miles per hour. This outbreak resulted in at least seventy-one tornadoes, causing extensive property damage with 2,314 homes destroyed and around $1.2 billion in estimated damages. Despite the severe destruction, the human toll was relatively low, with forty-seven fatalities reported. The event highlighted the dangers of mobile homes and overpasses during tornadoes, prompting a greater awareness and preparation for future storms among residents. The aftermath of the outbreak led to increased interest in building storm cellars and safe rooms, ultimately reshaping community responses to tornado threats in the region.
Oklahoma tornado outbreak
The Event Tornadoes take forty-seven human lives and cause immense property damage
Date May 3, 1999
Place Central and northern Oklahoma, as well as Kansas
The many tornadoes that hit Oklahoma and Kansas would have cost more lives had scientific weather forecasting, technologically advanced communications, and alert television and radio reporting not given most residents adequate warning.
At 8:00 a.m. on Monday, May 3, 1999, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, Oklahoma, issued a notice that the risk for thunderstorms was slight. As the day advanced, the SPC raised the risk to moderate, then to high. At 4:45 p.m., it issued a tornado watch to alert much of the state and part of Kansas that atmospheric conditions might lead to supercell thunderstorms, which generate tornadoes. At 4:47 p.m., the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning, and soon a small tornado touched the ground in northern Comanche County, Oklahoma. Television and radio stations were quick to inform their audiences of the general danger; as events proceeded, the efforts to warn residents proved valuable.
Metropolitan Oklahoma City
The worst of the tornadoes began at 6:23 p.m. in rural Grady County, Oklahoma, near the small town of Amber, and, as tornadoes usually do in North America, moved northeast—in this case, toward metropolitan Oklahoma City. At about 6:54 p.m., as the tornado left the community of Bridge Creek, near the South Canadian River, mobile Doppler radar measured its rotating wind speed on the ground at 301 miles per hour (484 kilometers per hour), plus or minus 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour). A tornado with a rotational speed that high is capable of causing such extreme damage that it would be rated as an F5, the highest category of the Fujita scale used then to indicate tornadic severity. It was the highest wind speed ever measured at the Earth’s surface.
Immediately north of the McClain County town of Newcastle, near the Interstate 44 bridge across the South Canadian, the tornado entered Cleveland County and the southernmost part of Oklahoma City, from which it moved on to the large suburb of Moore, crossing Interstate 35 at its junction with Shields Boulevard. After further movement through Moore, the tornado reentered Oklahoma City and crossed the Oklahoma County line, then proceeded into Del City and past Tinker Air Force Base. Having already slackened enough to become an F4, the tornado eventually disappeared over Midwest City, north of Interstate 40 and east of Sooner Road. It had traveled 38 miles (61 kilometers) and lasted 85 minutes.
Stroud, Mulhall, and Metropolitan Wichita
Although the F5 tornado in Grady, Cleveland, and Oklahoma counties was the most powerful, it was only one among dozens from eleven supercell thunderstorms in Oklahoma and Kansas in the late afternoon and night of May 3. An F3 tornado hit Stroud, Oklahoma, on Interstate 44 in Lincoln County, midway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. More powerful was the F4 tornado that struck the small town of Mulhall, Oklahoma, in northern Logan County. Mobile Doppler radar measured the distance between the highest speeds on either side of that enormous tornado at 1.0 mile (1.6 kilometers) and measured a diameter of 4.3 miles (7.0 kilometers) between points where gusts exceeded 96 miles per hour (155 kilometers per hour). Farther north, another F4 hit Haysville, Kansas, and moved into Wichita.
Impact
Altogether, at least seventy-one tornadoes struck Oklahoma on May 3, and a total of ninety-six occurred on the Great Plains that day and the next. Property damage was immense. Tornadoes destroyed 2,314 houses and damaged 7,428 others. As for apartments, 473 were destroyed in Cleveland and Oklahoma counties. Among the total of 164 destroyed businesses were all 53 in Stroud’s Tanger Factory Outlet Center, a shopping mall that has not been rebuilt. Additionally, the tornado outbreak destroyed four public buildings, two schools, and five churches. The estimate of the total property damage was $1.2 billion.
In contrast to the immense damage, the human death toll was low. Of the forty-seven fatalities, five were in Sedgwick County, Kansas, and the other forty-two were in eight Oklahoma counties. The F5 tornado that began in Grady County and ended in Oklahoma County claimed thirty-eight lives. As almost everyone knew beforehand, mobile homes, as in Bridge Creek, are death traps in tornadoes. As many people learned because of this outbreak, overpasses create wind tunnels during tornadoes and therefore prove unsafe places for shelter. Three persons who tried to take cover at overpasses along interstate highways in Oklahoma died from their injuries: one each in McClain, Cleveland, and Payne counties. Along with the high number of injuries, the number of deaths did have the positive result of encouraging people in Oklahoma, where basements are rare, to have storm cellars or safe rooms built at their houses, and the total of injuries and deaths should have reminded Oklahomans, Kansans, and others of the need for solid construction and of the threat tornadoes pose.
Bibliography
Bluestein, Howard B. Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. A meteorologist’s depiction of tornadoes through text and photographs and a history of relevant research.
Bradford, Marlene. Scanning the Skies: A History of Tornado Forecasting. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. Traces the history of tornado forecasting and the technological advances that helped improve it.
Grazulis, Thomas P. The Tornado: Nature’s Ultimate Windstorm. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. A meteorologist’s thorough, statistically rich account of tornadoes in general, with a page about the Oklahoma outbreak of 1999.
Mathis, Nancy. Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. A mixture of the stories about meteorologists and tornado victims, with an emphasis on the tornado that struck metropolitan Oklahoma City in 1999.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National Weather Service. Weather Forecast Office. “The Great Plains Tornado Outbreak of May 3, 1999.” http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/19990503/. A short account, with a map and photographs.