terrorism. Suggests that the U.S. armed forces
may indirectly serve as training camps for future
terrorists such as McVeigh.
M. Casey DianaSee also Clinton, Bill; Gun control; McVeigh, Tim-
othy; Militia movement; Montana Freemen stand-
off; Ruby Ridge shoot-out; Terrorism; Waco siege;
World Trade Center bombing.
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, tech-
nologically advanced communications, and alert televi-
sion and radio reporting not given most residents adequate
warning.
At 8:00a.m.on Monday, May 3, 1999, the Storm Pre-
diction 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 mod-
erate, then to high. At 4:45p.m., it issued a tornado
watch to alert much of the state and part of Kan-
sas that atmospheric conditions might lead to super-
cell thunderstorms, which generate tornadoes. At
4:47p.m., the National Weather Service issued a
tornado warning, and soon a small tornado touched
the ground in northern Comanche County, Okla-
homa. Television and radio stations were quick to in-
form their audiences of the general danger; as
events proceeded, the efforts to warn residents
proved valuable.
Metropolitan Oklahoma City The worst of the tor-
nadoes began at 6:23p.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 Okla-
homa City. At about 6:54p.m., as the tornado left the
community of Bridge Creek, near the South Cana-
dian River, mobile Doppler radar measured its rotat-
ing 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 indi-
cate 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 tor-
nado 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 thunder-
storms in Oklahoma and Kansas in the late after-
noon 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 dis-
tance 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 kilome-
ters) 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 de-
stroyed 2,314 houses and damaged 7,428 others. As
for apartments, 473 were destroyed in Cleveland
and Oklahoma counties. Among the total of 164 de-
stroyed businesses were all 53 in Stroud’s Tanger
Factory Outlet Center, a shopping mall that has not
been rebuilt. Additionally, the tornado outbreak de-The Nineties in America Oklahoma tornado outbreak 635