Today (April 16) is the 17th anniversary of the ‘Forgotten F-5,’ so-called because the Nashville tornadoes of the same day overshadowed reports of the storm on major news networks.

The storm that tore through Lawrence County on April 16, 1998 produced the only recorded F-5 tornado in Tennessee history. The path taken by the 1998 tornado was very similar to the F-4 tornado of May 18, 1995. Both storms ravaged Deerfield and Ethridge.

The 1998 tornado was over a mile wide at some points and caused damage to over 100 homes in Lawrence County, including over two dozen homes destroyed. Between Lawrence, Wayne, and Maury counties, more than 150 homes were destroyed by the storm. Three people were killed by the tornado in Wayne County.

This video was shot by Doug Alley of Deerfield, whose family was watching the storm from their back yard, which was about a mile and a half from where the funnel appears here. The broken trees in the foreground are remnants of damage done by the 1995 tornado, which destroyed the Alley family’s house.

The year 1998 was a meteorologically active year for Lawrence County. Tornadic winds swept through the northern end of the county earlier that spring, and a later storm produced a severe hail storm that did a great deal of damage to area homes and vehicles. That July, a massive flood of Shoal Creek killed 2, injured 20, and damaged or destroyed 122 homes across Lawrence County.