Tornadoes · United States · Kansas · 2001

F0 tornado, Lincoln, Kansas, April 21, 2001

This F0 tornado ran 2.0 miles across Lincoln County on April 21, 2001, touching down at 11:15 PM CDT and reaching 220 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $50,000 of property damage.

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.

  1. F040 to 72 mphthis tornado

    Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

  2. F173 to 112 mph

    Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. F4207 to 260 mph

    Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

  6. 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.

  7. 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
April 21, 2001
Touchdown
11:15 PM CDT (04:15 UTC)
Path length
2.0 miles (3.2 km)
Path width
220 yards (201 m)
Deaths
0
Injuries
0
Property damage
$50,000
County
Lincoln County
Touchdown point
38.930, -98.150
Lift-off point
38.970, -98.150
Record number
609

What the Weather Service recorded

Minor damage to one home as well as a few trees.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

The forecast that day

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Moderate Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 00:57 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.

What forecasters said that day

The local office's own words before the tornado touched down, as it sent them, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service text.

NWS Wichita, KS wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at Apr 21, 6:02 PM CDT, 5 hours 13 minutes earlier.

Area forecast discussion, Apr 21, 6:02 PM CDT, 5 hours 13 minutes before
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WICHITA KS
602 PM CDT SAT APR 21 2001

...MESOSCALE UPDATE...

MAIN FOCUS FOR TSTMS OVR NEXT FEW HRS WL BE ALG WFNT CURRENTLY
EXTENDING FM NR SLN TO JUST S OF RSL.  THE FNT CONTS TO MOVE TO THE
N.  MOST IMPORTANTLY THE HILLSBORO PROFILER/RASS SOUNDING SHOWS STG
CAP.  THIS IS CONSISTANT WITH BOTH LAPS SOUNDINGS.  RADAR TRENDS
ALSO SIMILAR WITH WEAK DVLPMT ALG FNT IN CNTRL KS BUT WITH
MOST/STONGEST TSTMS TO THE NE WHERE CAP IS WEAKER.  WHILE CANNOT RUN
OUT AN ISOLATED/BRIEF STG/SVR TSTM IN CNTRL KS THRU SUNSET...BELIEVE
BETTER CHC WL BE LATER TONIGHT AS LLVL JET KICKS IN AND SOME COOLING
ALF.  HOWEVER THE BIG QUESTION THEN IS WHERE WL THE FNT BE LOCATED?
IF 12Z MODELS ARE CORRECT MUCH OF ACTIVITY WL END UP N OF OUR FCST
AREA.  THE ONLY OTHER CHC WOULD BE IF TSTMS DVLP ALG RETREATING
DRYLN TO THE W AND THEN MOVE INTO THE AREA...BUT AGAIN THAT WOULD
LKLY BE MUCH LATER TNGT.

HOWERTON

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.

Dodge City, (KDDC), 00:00Z

4.3 hours before the tornado, 201 km from the path. April 22, 2001.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Dodge City, at 00:00Z on 2001-04-22Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 1118 joules per kilogram, CIN -11, lifted condensation level 1940 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCLLFCEL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km-30°-20°-10°0°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Dodge City, at 00:00Z on 2001-04-22The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity 181 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 62 knots.19395878Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
1118 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
-11 J/kg
Surface CAPE
2606 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
1940 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
62 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
18 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
181 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
365 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
0.1
Supercell composite
12.2
0-3 km lapse rate
8.4 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

Dodge City, (KDDC), 12:00Z

7.7 hours after it, 201 km from the path. April 22, 2001.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Dodge City, at 12:00Z on 2001-04-22Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 1369 joules per kilogram, CIN -75, lifted condensation level 670 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCLLFCEL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km15 km-30°-20°-10°0°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Dodge City, at 12:00Z on 2001-04-22The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity 310 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 49 knots.1939587897Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
1369 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
-75 J/kg
Surface CAPE
1719 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
670 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
49 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
38 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
310 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
330 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
1.8
Supercell composite
9.0
0-3 km lapse rate
5.2 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

The surface observations

Salina (SLN), 47 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

Time (UTC)Temp (°F)Dew point (°F)WindGust (kt)Pressure (mb)Weather
00:00 UTC

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

This ground now

The live radar over the trackEvery 2001 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of April 21, 2001

11 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

DateTimeRatingWherePath (mi)Width (yd)DeathsInjuriesDamage
April 212:35 PM CDTF1Mohave, CA to NV, AZ3.050
April 217:00 PM CDTF0Pawnee, KS0.430
April 217:30 PM CDTF0Rush, KS1.575
April 217:40 PM CDTF2Rush, KS1.5100$200,000
April 218:04 PM CDTF0Trego, KS0.250
April 218:07 PM CDTF0Rush, KS2.275
April 219:00 PM CDTF0Rush, KS0.350
April 219:15 PM CDTF4Hoisington tornado, KS5.0660128$43 million
April 219:37 PM CDTF0Barton, KS0.555
April 2110:15 PM CDTF0Ellsworth, KS0.555
April 2110:44 PM CDTF0Ellsworth, KS2.0220$10,000

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.