EF1 tornado, Riga to Ellis, 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 mphthis tornado

   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 mph

   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

EF1

Date

May 23, 2008

Touchdown

8:44 PM CDT (01:44 UTC)

Lifted

8:55 PM CDT (01:55 UTC)

On the ground

11 minutes

Path length

5.5 miles (8.8 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Trego and Ellis counties

Touchdown point

38.864, -99.614

Lift-off point

38.932, -99.563

Record number

0805231944-01

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 tornado moved over a sparsely populated area but did EF2 damage to trees. It moved northwest towards the end of it's life cycle.

This tornado produced EF1 damage to outbuildings, a storage tank, power poles and houses in Ellis. A female was injured when she went out to get her horse and was hit by flying debris from the tornado.

This tornado moved north and then northwest. No damage was reported.

Power poles and trees were damaged by this tornado. It moved into Ellis county at 20:47 CDT.

This tornado moved out of Trego county at 20:47 CDT. It was in it's dissipating stage as it moved into the town of Ellis. Damage was done to outbuildings, power poles, shingles on quite a few homes and minor roof damage to a few other homes.

This tornado did EF1 damage to outbuildings, a grain silo, an oil tank and trees. The tornado moved into Ellis county at 20:10 CDT.

This tornado moved into Rooks county. It produced EF1 damage to trees and power lines on the Rooks/Ellis county line.

This tornado moved out of Trego county and did EF1 damage to trees.

This was a brief tornado.

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

35 minutes of warning. NWS DDC issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:09 UTC, 35 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:16 UTC and running to 01:52 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.

The Dodge City radar (KDDC), 131 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:44 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.