Tornadoes · United States · Kansas · 1996
F0 tornado, Oberlin to Jennings, Kansas, July 15, 1996
From Oberlin to Jennings, this F0 tornado ran 0.2 miles across Decatur County on July 15, 1996, touching down at 10:40 PM CDT and reaching 30 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
F040 to 72 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
F2113 to 157 mph
Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.
F3158 to 206 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
F4207 to 260 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
F5261 to 318 mph
Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.
Unrated
The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.
The record
- Rating
- F0
- Date
- July 15, 1996
- Touchdown
- 10:40 PM CDT (03:40 UTC)
- Path length
- 0.2 miles (0.3 km)
- Path width
- 30 yards (27 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Decatur County
- Touchdown point
- 39.680, -100.280
- Lift-off point
- 39.670, -100.280
- Record number
- 483
What the Weather Service recorded
BRIEF TORNADO.
TORNADO OBSERVED BY SPOTTER
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
27 minutes of warning. NWS GLD issued a tornado warning for this county at 03:13 UTC, 27 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 04:15 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02:41 UTC | 03:45 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | GLD |
| 03:13 UTC | 04:15 UTC | Tornado Warning | GLD |
Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.
The forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 06:20 UTC.
SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.
The air that afternoon
The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.
N. Platte/Lee Bi, NE (KLBF), 00:00Z
3.7 hours before the tornado, 164 km from the path. July 16, 1996.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 855 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -83 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1609 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1936 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 56 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 16 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 108 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 241 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.1
- Supercell composite
- 2.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.7 K/km
N. Platte/Lee Bi, NE (KLBF), 12:00Z
8.3 hours after it, 164 km from the path. July 16, 1996.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 685 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -391 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 3 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1042 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 33 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 22 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 217 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 205 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 3.3 K/km
The radar
The Goodland radar (KGLD), 127 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:40 UTC.
Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track
Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 1996 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of July 15, 1996
9 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 15 | 1:20 PM EDT | F1 | Ontario, NY | 0.5 | 15 | $30,000 | ||
| July 15 | 3:00 PM EDT | F1 | Bedford, VA | 0.1 | 25 | $90,000 | ||
| July 15 | 3:00 PM EDT | F0 | Oswego, NY | 0.5 | 10 | 3 | $40,000 | |
| July 15 | 3:30 PM EDT | F2 | Bedford, VA | 0.5 | 30 | $140,000 | ||
| July 15 | 3:30 PM EDT | F0 | Charles, MD | 0.3 | 25 | $4,000 | ||
| July 15 | 4:19 PM EDT | F0 | Lee, FL | 3.0 | 10 | 2 | $250,000 | |
| July 15 | 7:30 PM EDT | F1 | Gloucester, VA | 7.0 | 100 | $100,000 | ||
| July 15 | 10:20 PM CDT | F0 | Decatur, KS | 0.2 | 20 | |||
| July 15 | 11:15 PM CDT | F0 | Graham, KS | 0.2 | 30 |
What this means
Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.