One Of America's Most Infamous Tornadoes, The Deadly Oklahoma City F5, Struck 25 Years Ago

Twenty-five years ago this week, one of the most infamous tornadoes in U.S. history ransacked parts of the Oklahoma City metro area, just one twister in a historic, deadly Plains outbreak.

T​he big one: On May 3, 1999, a tornado up to a mile wide tore a 38-mile long path in almost 90 minutes through parts of Grady, McClain, Cleveland and Oklahoma Counties, including parts of Bridge Creek, Newcastle, southern Oklahoma City, Moore, Midwest City and Del City.

D​amage, death toll: This massive tornado inflicted F4 to F5 damage along much of its path from northeast Grady County to near Tinker Air Force Base on Oklahoma City's southeast side. It was the first F5 tornado on record to hit the Oklahoma City metro area. (Note: Since 2007, tornadoes are now rated using the EF or Enhanced-Fujita scale.)

This single tornado was responsible for 36 deaths and approximately $1 billion in damage, the state's single costliest tornado at the time. That included 1,800 homes destroyed and another 2,500 homes damaged.

Some homes were not only destroyed, but swept away, leaving only empty slabs. Vehicles were tossed a quarter of a mile, some into adjacent businesses, and an 18-ton freight car was blown and dragged three-quarters of a mile across a field, according to the National Weather Service recap.

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A​ record wind measurement: A "Doppler on Wheels" mobile research radar found peak winds of 301 mph (with a margin of error of 20 mph) at a height of 105 feet above the ground in that F5 tornado.

T​hat remains the record highest wind speed sampled by a Doppler radar ​and strongest winds ever found so close to the ground.

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O​ther violent tornadoes in the outbreak: Two other Oklahoma tornadoes were rated F4 on May 3, both north of Oklahoma City in Kingfisher County, where one person was killed, and from Logan into Noble Counties, where two people were killed.

H​owever, another F4 tornado around sunset that evening hammered the southern Wichita, Kansas, suburb of Haysville. Six people were killed and 177 homes and businesses were damaged.

F​rom May 3 until midday on May 4, 72 tornadoes touched down in Oklahoma, a record number for any Sooner State outbreak dating to 1950.

I​t could have been even worse: A violent tornado roaring into a heavily-populated metro area is a frightening scenario. But meteorologists within the National Weather Service and in the media kept the public warned ahead of the May 3, 1999 outbreak.

The NWS-Norman, Oklahoma, office issued 116 severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings in 10 hours that day. That included the nation's first "tornado emergency."

"​When that phrase was first used, it came about because of the need of the (National) Weather Service to shake people and really grab their attention," Rick Smith, warning coordination meteorologist at NWS-Norman, told NPR in 2013.

I​n a June 1999 NOAA recap, research scientist Harold Brooks said, "With the amount of damage, we can estimate based on a long historical record that without warnings hundreds more lives would have been lost; 700 direct fatalities could have occurred."

A​nd in the south Wichita metro, a timely NWS tornado warning received on a NOAA weather radio allowed about 85 employees of a plastics plant to make it through that F4 tornado without any injuries, despite much of the plant being destroyed.

M​ay 3, 1999 kicked off a terrible stretch: While central Oklahoma has a long history of destructive tornadoes, May 3, 1999, kicked off a particularly bad stretch.

F​our years later, on May 8 and 9, 2003, the Oklahoma City metro was hit by strong tornadoes on consecutive days for the first time on record.

O​n May 10, 2010, an EF4 tornado, and two EF1 tornadoes, spun through Moore, Oklahoma, including areas not far from those hit in 1999.

T​hen a particularly terrible stretch of late May 2013 included the nation's most recent EF5 tornado, once again through parts of Newcastle and Moore on May 20.

Just 11 days later, the massive, deadly El Reno tornado on May 31 was accompanied by other supercells rolling through Oklahoma City during Friday evening rush hour, then followed by deadly flash flooding.

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Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. He completed a Bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then a Master's degree working with dual-polarization radar and lightning data at Colorado State University. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.