EF3 tornado, Sawyer to Preston, Kansas, May 23, 2008

1. EF065 to 85 mph

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

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

3. EF2111 to 135 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. EF3136 to 165 mphthis tornado

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. EF5over 200 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

EF3

Date

May 23, 2008

Touchdown

10:24 PM CDT (03:24 UTC)

Lifted

11:05 PM CDT (04:05 UTC)

On the ground

41 minutes

Path length

21.9 miles (35.2 km)

Path width

1,430 yards (1308 m)

Deaths

2

Injuries

2

County

Pratt County

Touchdown point

37.484, -98.634

Lift-off point

37.769, -98.493

Record number

0805232124-01

An anonymously strong upper level system allowed everything to come together at the surface to produced what is perhaps the biggest tornado outbreak to ever occur in the Dodge City CWA! Fifty-five tornadoes were documented during that afternoon and evening! Some of the tornadoes were very large and damaging. The character of the supercell thunderstorms that day had similarities to the storms that produced the Greensburg tornado a little over a year after. In fact there was one tornado that was just as large and perhaps could have been just as damaging that was headed towards the small Kiowa county town but fortunately turned and dissipated.

This 3/4 mile wide tornado produced EF3 damage and unfortunately claimed two lives. A husband and wife were parked on highway 54 approximately 2 1/4 miles east of Cairo. The tornado picked up their car and carried it approximately 1700 feet NNE into a wheat field (they were not discovered until the next morning at about 9 AM). The female occupant was ejected and was found 30 feet southwest of the wreckage. The male was still strapped in his seat. The car was nearly unrecognizable. ||A second vehicle (3/4 ton truck) was parked 20 yards behind the aforementioned car. It also went airborne briefly but got lodged on the north side ditch. The two male occupants received numerous cuts and bruises but were otherwise unhurt. They both claimed it was extremely cold immediately after crawling out of their vehicle with heavy vapor breath noticed.||This tornado destroyed a home about a mile north and the collapsed east wall trapped a male in the bathtub where he had taken cover. Help was needed in lifting the wall off of him but he claimed he was not hurt. Other homes in the tornadoes path received minor to moderate damage.

The deaths

2 direct deaths are recorded for this tornado, each with what Storm Data knows of it.

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

45 minutes of warning. NWS DDC issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:39 UTC, 45 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 03:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 01:52 UTC and running to 06:15 UTC.

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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:55 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 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.

Pratt (PTT), 18 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Wichita radar (KICT), 99 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:24 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2008 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are

78 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 79 of them

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.