Tornadoes · United States · Kansas · 2009
EF1 tornado, Wilmore, Kansas, June 14, 2009
This EF1 tornado ran 3.7 miles across Comanche County on June 14, 2009, touching down at 8:03 PM CDT and reaching 100 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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
- EF1
- Date
- June 14, 2009
- Touchdown
- 8:03 PM CDT (01:03 UTC)
- Lifted
- 8:10 PM CDT (01:10 UTC)
- On the ground
- 7 minutes
- Path length
- 3.7 miles (6.0 km)
- Path width
- 100 yards (91 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Comanche County
- Touchdown point
- 37.381, -99.232
- Lift-off point
- 37.376, -99.169
- Record number
- 0906141903-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Another disturbance moving across an unstable atmosphere generated severe thunderstorms once again.
This tornado was just south of the Comanche/Kiowa county line as it first moved east and then southeast. Towards the end it caused damage to a farm. A roof was blown off a lean-to, tin was stripped of a barn and a central air unit was removed from a house and destroyed.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 22:21 UTC and running to 02:26 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 22:21 UTC | 02:26 UTC | Tornado Watch | DDC |
| 00:52 UTC | 01:30 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | DDC |
| 01:04 UTC | 01:30 UTC | Tornado Warning | DDC |
| 01:27 UTC | 01:39 UTC | Tornado Warning | DDC |
| 01:29 UTC | 01:42 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | DDC |
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, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:02 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.
Dodge City, (KDDC), 00:00Z
1.1 hours before the tornado, 75 km from the path. June 15, 2009.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 901 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -124 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1815 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1286 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 53 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 20 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 137 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 178 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.2
- Supercell composite
- 2.6
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.4 K/km
Dodge City, (KDDC), 12:00Z
10.9 hours after it, 75 km from the path. June 15, 2009.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 848 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -290 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 245 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1324 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 32 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 32 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 119 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 76 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.5 K/km
The radar
The Dodge City radar (KDDC), 80 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:04 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:56 UTC | HAIL 1 | 12 S Greensburg | Kiowa, KS | |
| 00:58 UTC | TSTM WND GST 60 | 10 S Greensburg | Kiowa, KS | |
| 01:08 UTC | TORNADO | 3 N Wilmore | Comanche, KS | TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN BRIEFLY. |
| 01:18 UTC | TORNADO | 3 Ne Wilmore | Comanche, KS | AN APPARENT TORNADO CAUSED DAMAGE INCLUDING A ROOF BLOWN OFF A LEAN-TO, TIN STRIPPED OFF OF A BARN, SEVERAL LARGE BRANCHES BROKEN FROM TREES AND A CENTRAL AIR UNIT MOVED FROM A HOME AND DESTROYED. |
| 01:53 UTC | HAIL 1 | 17 Wnw Medicine Lodge | Barber, KS |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2009 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 14, 2009
7 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 14 | 10:25 AM CDT | EF1 | Lawrence, AL | 0.8 | 150 | |||
| June 14 | 1:27 PM MDT | EF0 | Platte, WY | 5.9 | 40 | |||
| June 14 | 2:53 PM MDT | EF0 | Hot Springs, WY | 0.7 | 30 | |||
| June 14 | 5:23 PM CDT | EF0 | Haskell, KS | 3.3 | 125 | |||
| June 14 | 6:45 PM EDT | EF1 | Morgan, KY | 1.5 | 75 | $35,000 | ||
| June 14 | 5:47 PM CDT | EF1 | Haskell, KS | 3.7 | 150 | $250,000 | ||
| June 14 | 5:50 PM CDT | EF1 | Haskell, KS | 0.6 | 75 | $2,000 |
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.