F0 tornado, Liberal, Kansas, July 10, 2002

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.

Rating

F0

Date

July 10, 2002

Touchdown

10:49 PM CDT (03:49 UTC)

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Seward County

Touchdown point

37.030, -100.850

Lift-off point

37.030, -100.850

Record number

226

A brief tornado occurred in an open pasture.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

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 Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 00:07 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.

NWS Dodge City, KS wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at Jul 10, 2:45 PM CDT, 8 hours 4 minutes earlier.

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DODGE CITY KS
245 PM CDT WED JUL 10 2002

DAYS 1-2...

THE UPPER LOW WAS STARTING TO DIG DOWN THE EASTERN PLAINS TODAY,
WITH A PREFRONTAL TROUGH IN SOUTHERN KS, AND THE TRUE COLD FRONT IN
NORTHWEST KS. ANOTHER STRONGER COLD FRONT WAS MOVING INTO NORTHEAST
SOUTH DAKOTA. THE SCENARIO WE ENVISION IS FOR STORMS TO DEVELOP
ALONG THE PREFRONTAL TROUGH THIS AFTERNOON AND THEN MOVE SOUTH INTO
OKLAHOMA LATER THIS EVENING. OVERNIGHT, A FEW MORE STORMS COULD
DEVELOP ALONG THE TRUE FRONT AS IT STARTS TO MOVE TROUGH CENTRAL/SW
KS. TEMPS SHOULD BE A FEW DEGREES COOLER THURSDAY BEHIND THE LEADING
FRONT. EVEN COOLER AIR WILL MOVE IN FRIDAY. GOING FCST SEEMS
CONSISTENT WITH THE ABOVE THINKING, SO MAJOR CHANGES ARE NOT
ANTICIPATED. THE ONLY REAL CHANGES WILL BE TO KEEP POPS GOING ALL
NIGHT TONIGHT AND NUDGE TEMPS DOWN A COUPLE DEGREES FOR FRIDAY.

DAYS 3-7...
MODELS REMAIN CONSISTENT WITH DEVELOPING A ERN CONUS TROF OVER THE
WEEKEND AND AMPLIFYING OUR WESTERN CONUS RIDGE. ON MONDAY A
UPPER LOW OVER THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY STARTS TO SLIDE BACK
WESTWARD TOWARDS OK/TX. THE 12Z AVN WAS EVEN FURTHER WEST WITH THIS
LOW BY 12Z MONDAY THAN THE MRF/ECMWF AND IF VERIFIED WOULD RETARD
THE WARMUP AND POSSIBLY BRING A SLT CHANCE FOR PCPN TO OUR ERN CWA.
AT THIS TIME CONFIDENCE WITH THIS FEATURE IS LOW BUT GIVEN THE
PREVIOUS FORECAST WAS TRENDING TOWARDS SLT CHC POPS LATE TUESDAY
HAVE OPTED TO LEAVE MENTION OF LOW POPS IN AT THIS TIME. AS FOR
TEMPS WILL CONTINUE WITH PERSISTENCE AND WARM TEMPS BACK INTO THE
90S THROUGH THE FIRST OF THE WEEK BUT WILL TRIM A FEW DEGREES OFF
THE ERN 1/2 OF THE CWA.

FINCH/BURGERT

PRELIMINARY GUIDANCE FOR COORDINATION ONLY. OFFICIAL FORECASTS ARE
CONTAINED WITHIN THE DODGE CITY ZONE FORECAST.

DDC   65  92  63  88 /  30  10   0   0
GCK   65  90  60  89 /  20  10   0   0
EHA   64  90  60  89 /  30  10   0   0
LBL   65  92  62  90 /  30  10   0   0
HYS   64  89  60  88 /  20  10   0   0
P28   70  94  64  90 /  40  20   0   0

.DDC...NONE.

In the hours before

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DODGE CITY KS
709 PM CDT WED JUL 10 2002

TIME(CDT)  .....CITY LOCATION..... STATE  ...EVENT/REMARKS...
           ....COUNTY LOCATION....

0545 PM    RADIUM                    KS   1.00 IN HAIL
07/10/02   STAFFORD                       REPORTED BY TRAINED
                                          SPOTTER

0605 PM    4SE LARNED                KS   0.88 IN HAIL
07/10/02   PAWNEE                         ALSO EST WIND SPEED 50 TO
                                          65 MPH. REPORTED BY
                                          PUBLIC

0618 PM    5SE LARNED                KS   0.75 IN HAIL
07/10/02   PAWNEE                         REPORTED BY PUBLIC

RB

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.

The Dodge City radar (KDDC), 113 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:49 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2002 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are

2 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.