On the morning of May 21, 1997, no one thought the weather conditions were especially bad. The upper atmosphere was unstable, but the winds were relatively weak. Meteorologists had no way of knowing that they were a few hours away from witnessing one of the deadliest tornadoes in Texas history.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
What made the Jarrell F5 tornado so deadly and why is it called "Dead Man Walking Tornado"?
The 1997 Jarrell Tornado caused 27 deaths, 12 injuries, and over $40 million in property damage ($79 million in 2025 dollars) in a little under 20 minutes.
Nearly all the fatalities came from a single neighborhood, the Double Creek Estates subdivision. The tornado was so damaging because as it gathered strength, it moved slowly (for a tornado) through the neighborhood. The tornado stopped over the subdivision for around 3 minutes, about 3:20pm.
During that time, it reached its maximum speed of over 260 miles per hour. The neighborhood was completely obliterated. This makes it one of the most damaging tornadoes ever recorded.
WATCH NOW: Footage of the 1997 Jarrell Tornado
The unique appearance and multi-vortex structure of the Jarrell tornado
The name "Dead Man Walking" tornado comes from the unique appearance of multi-vortex of these kinds of tornadoes.
Vortex: A swirling mass of air that rotates along a central axis. In the case of tornados, this vortex connects to the ground and the cloud mass of the thunderstorm above. A sub vortex forms when a smaller tornado of powerful energy starts swirling within.
Multi-Vortex Tornadoes contain more than one funnel cloud, often both rotating around the same axis or around each other. These kinds of tornadoes are especially damaging.
The multiple vortexes of a tornado like this one in 1997 give the tornado a haunting shape - like a monster with multiple legs crawling over the landscape, tossing homes, dirt, and cars as it goes.
Take a look at the photo below from an Oklahoma tornado in 2016 - you can spot the multiple funnel clouds gathering around the main twister, looking like a person made of clouds dancing through the field.
Source: James LaDue on The Weather Channel
Why the tornado's slow forward speed and intense wind made it particularly violent
Typically, tornados travel around 10 to 20 miles per hour. This may not seem fast, but the amount of damage a tornado can do is generally a factor of the speed it travels combined with the force of the winds.
Some tornadoes can track at 50 or even 60 miles per hour, making them extremely destructive. In the case of the Jarrell Tornado, it combined 250+ MPH winds with a very slow forward speed.
This meant that the intense winds spent a longer time hovering over Double Creek Estates. Essentially, it focused all that destructive force of wind over this neighborhood for three solid minutes. This resulted in an almost complete destruction of the subdivision. In many cases, building materials were ground away to dust.
Understanding the "Dead Man Walking" appearance and its tornado dynamics
Most of us are familiar with the "central cone" structure of tornados. In this case, there is a single vortex. In fact, until the 1970s, there were no photos of these multi-vortex tornadoes. Storm chasing is a relatively recent hobby.
Ted Fujita, the creator of the tornado strength rating scale, insisted that "suction vortices" were forming around main tornados. Many other scientists didn't believe him, because there was no photo or video evidence of it.
The 1974 Super Outbreak produced 148 tornadoes over 13 Midwestern and Eastern states. Many photos were captured, providing the existence of multiple vortexes.
The way these funnels "jump" over the landscape results in eerie sights, like razed homes on either side of an untouched building. This is because each vortex is capable of inflicting massive damage, and two or more vortexes can pass through an area while leaving a path in between.
Source: Charlotte Vancil, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What happened during the May 1997 Jarrell Texas tornado disaster?
Severe thunderstorms with hail spread throughout Central Texas that day. Meteorologists monitored a storm system forming earlier that day, as a supercell storm formed over central Texas.
Define: Supercell Storm: Storm systems with a deep, persisting, rotating updraft called a mesocyclone - these produce the distinctive "anvil cloud" shape that stretches out across the sky.
After some F0 and F1 tornadoes formed to the north, The National Weather Service in Waco issued a Tornado Warning for the area. While tornadoes commonly move east or northeast, this storm system was unusual because it moved south and southeast rapidly through the late morning and early afternoon.
Several other weak tornadoes formed in nearby Cedar Park and Pedernales Valley, causing additional damage.
How the F5 tornado formed and touched down in the Jarrell area
Around 3:15 pm on May 27, a weak F0 or F1 tornado formed just north of Williams County, where Jarrell is located. It moved slowly south. Suddenly, its strength dramatically increased. By the time it reached the Double Creek Estates subdivision in Jarrell, it had become a vicious F5.
The initial "pencil" tornado formed around the small town of Prairie Dell, just north of Jarrell. Within only about 10 or 15 minutes, the tornado had grown into a large wedge that covered over 3/4 of a mile.
The devastating 260+ mph winds and their impact on the small town
One of the most damaging factors of the tornado was its immense strength combined with its slow speed. Survivors reported that the F5 seemed to "hover" over Double Creek Estates. The result was like putting a neighborhood through a blender- nothing was left.
READ NOW: Emergency Preparedness: How to Pack a Go Bag Kit
How did people experience the Jarrell tornado? Firsthand accounts and videos
It's hard to believe, but personal electronics are only a few decades old. Smartphones are everywhere today, and camcorders and digital cameras were fairly common in the 1990s and early 200s. Before then, footage of tornadoes was relatively rare. Storm Chasing was a very niche interest until the late 90s.
Those who suffered personal losses to these storms, however, remember the day with crystal clarity.
Survivor stories and family experiences from the deadly Texas storm
One Jarrell resident, Mallory Cantler Sumner, remembers her mom and sisters helping to pull the mattress off her bed to provide some shelter from the storm.
“You couldn’t even see out the windows. Our house was completely black. And then it got quiet. Very very, very quiet."
She heard the sound of a train moving nearby, then soft rain and hail. When she and her family went outside, they could no longer see the Double Creek Estates from their yard. It had been completely obliterated.
Another survivor of the tornado, Kristin LaFrance, was 9 years old when her parents took her and the couch cushions into the bathtub for some shelter. She remembers her father telling her to "hold on tight" as he sheltered Kristin and her mother's bodies with his own. Then, the "walls seemed to fall away," she tasted dirt, and blacked out. She woke up several minutes later in her yard. Her mother was alive, deposited in a nearby tree by the tornado. The only thing left of her home was the concrete slab. "Hold on tight" had been her father's last words.
A year later, the town of Jarrell erected a monument listing the names of each person killed in the deadly tornado. It also listed the names of those killed in a separate event in 1989.
Most shocking footage: "The worst tornado I've ever seen" top comments
Local meteorologists were stunned by how quickly the storm gathered strength. Eyewitnesses from that day later shared their experiences. To this day, the Jarrell Tornado is probably the strongest documented F5 tornado that has ever hit Texas.
One witness, Lon Curtis, witnessed the rapid and dramatic growth of the Dead Man Walking Tornado. Curtis later recounted:
“[It] looked like it was virtually stationary, although the portion of the vortex which was in ground contact was ‘wandering’ in a pasture about 3/10 of a mile from me. Between 3:10 and 3:20 PM, the cloud base portion of the vortex began thickening.”
One photojournalist, Scott Guest, was on the scene and captured some of the first images of the tornado. He recalled:
"I saw the needle start to come down...
And I looked back down the freeway and I saw the clouds. I didn't really realize what I had seen at first. And I looked back again. I realized that that wasn't a dark cloud, it was a tornado, and it was tremendously large, way bigger than anything that we had witnessed up to that point.
Back then, it was very rare to get images of an actual tornado, and it became one of the most photographed tornadoes in history at that time. People didn't have cameras like they do now. There were no storm chasers."
Guest went on to share that he and his partner were some of the first on the scene after the Jarrell destruction. They were puzzled because they didn't even recognize that the site they were viewing had been a development only an hour earlier:
"We talked to a couple of people and asked them, "Where are the houses?" [They told us] they were right over there, but they're all gone. And you could just see slabs."
WATCH NOW: KVUE photojournalist recalls 1997 Jarrell tornado, how it affected him
What meteorologists observed about this unique tornado
The wind shear the day of the Jarrell Tornado was unusually weak. This surprised meteorologists, who usually considered a sharp wind shear a crucial part of the tornado "recipe."
One weather forecaster from a local station, Jim Spencer, recounted:
“You might have a severe thunderstorm or two, but never in our wildest dreams could we imagine that the atmosphere could produce what it ended up producing that day,”
One meteorologist commented that this severe tornado seemed to contradict every expectation he had about severe tornadoes.
“They took every page out of the meteorology textbooks, chewed ’em up and spit ’em out,” said Troy Kimmel.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Why is the Jarrell tornado considered one of the most violent in U.S. history?
The Jarrell tornado was so destructive because of the total pulverization of the neighborhood it passed through.
During most tornadoes, there is recognizable debris afterward. The Jarrell Tornado was unique because nothing was left of the subdivision except concrete slabs and mud. The strong winds ground even asphalt and wood into tiny fragments.
Comparing Jarrell to other significant tornadoes in Oklahoma and Texas
Long-term impact on tornado research and storm prediction
What can we learn from the Jarrell tornado disaster today?
The Jarrell Tornado taught meteorologists several things about tornado formation.
First, the speed at which three smaller tornados joined together to form the massive storm wall of the multi-vortex tornado was shocking to many. Within just a few minutes, the tornado went from a thin, pencil formation to a 3/4 mile behemoth.
How tornado forecasting has changed since the 1997 Jarrell disaster
Since the 1997 Jarrell tornado, scientists have more closely studied the various factors that can produce tornadoes. This kind of weather phenomenon is incredibly complex and difficult to predict. A wide variety of factors including air pressure, dew point, jet stream, wind shear, and more can affect the formation of a tornado. Significantly, some meteorologists used this event to better understand the mesoscale, or microclimates within the weather system that produce storms.
The National Weather Service has implemented better early warning systems, which helps keep citizens in rural areas safer.
READ NOW: Why do Tornadoes Only Happen in the U.S.?
Warning signs of a potential "Dead Man Walking Tornado" formation
Thanks to movies and TV, we're all familiar with the traditional, single-vortex tornado. Multi-vortex tornadoes can be deceptive. Because they are so large, people sometimes mistake them for clouds along a normal stormfront and fail to seek shelter.
Another trick of the dead man walking tornado is its slow speed. Because it moves at only a few miles per hour, it can appear to be less dangerous than speeding tornados. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, tornados that move more slowly, like the Jarrell Tornado, do devastating damage, because they "hover" over a location for longer, subjecting the site to punishing damage.
Safety lessons for protecting human life during similar violent storms
Research suggests that most people do take safety precautions during tornado warnings.
- Tornado Watch - The conditions exist for the formation of a tornado
-
Tornado Warning - A tornado has been sighted in the area.
Remember, the best way to prevent loss of life is to seek shelter immediately if a tornado warning is issued or you spot swirling clouds, high winds, or a green sky.
Take refuge in a basement, or on the lowest level of a building. Seek the interior of the building, away from windows or heavy objects. Shelter yourself with mattresses, pillows, or cushions. Never try to go out in a tornado to film it, watch it, or rescue personal belongings. None of that is worth your life.
Frequently Asked Questions