Tornadoes · United States · Kansas · 2009
EF0 tornado, Attica, Kansas, March 7, 2009
This EF0 tornado ran 0.5 miles across Harper County on March 7, 2009, touching down at 7:30 PM CST and reaching 75 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 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
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
- EF0
- Date
- March 7, 2009
- Touchdown
- 7:30 PM CST (01:30 UTC)
- Lifted
- 7:32 PM CST (01:32 UTC)
- On the ground
- 2 minutes
- Path length
- 0.5 miles (0.9 km)
- Path width
- 75 yards (69 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Harper County
- Touchdown point
- 37.290, -98.160
- Lift-off point
- 37.294, -98.151
- Record number
- 0903071930-01
What the Weather Service recorded
The interaction of a quasistationary front and a dryline lead to discrete supercells developing across portions of Central and South Central Kansas during the late afternoon and evening hours of March 7th, 2009. Brief tornado touchdowns occured just to the south of Hutchinson with the supercells along with hail up to golfball size.
A brief tornado touchdown occured in open country.
A brief touchdown occured in an open field. A small debris cloud was also noted.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
18 minutes of warning. NWS ICT issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:12 UTC, 18 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:45 UTC.
The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 20:32 UTC and running to 03:53 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20:32 UTC | 03:53 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Watch | ICT |
| 01:12 UTC | 01:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | ICT |
| 03:53 UTC | 06:44 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Watch | ICT |
| 05:11 UTC | 05:24 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | ICT |
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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:59 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.
Lamont, OK (KLMN), 00:00Z
1.5 hours before the tornado, 96 km from the path. March 8, 2009.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 654 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -86 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 684 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1275 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 65 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 24 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 239 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 231 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.5
- Supercell composite
- 1.1
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 7.0 K/km
Lamont, OK (KLMN), 12:00Z
10.5 hours after it, 96 km from the path. March 8, 2009.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -59880 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 727 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 64 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 9 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -64 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 16 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 3.3 K/km
The radar
The Vance AFB radar (KVNX), 61 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:29 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:09 UTC | HAIL 0.5 | 5 W Kingman | Kingman, KS | 1 INCH THICK ON HIGHWAY 54. CARS WERE SLIDING ON HIGHWAY. |
| 00:16 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | 8 Ne Medicine Lodge | Barber, KS | |
| 00:18 UTC | TORNADO | 4 N Medicine Lodge | Barber, KS | THERE WAS A BRIEF TOUCHDOWN LASTING ABOUT 3 SECONDS. |
| 00:20 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | 9 Ne Medicine Lodge | Barber, KS | |
| 00:25 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | 11 Ne Medicine Lodge | Kingman, KS | |
| 00:25 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | 6 Se Isabel | Barber, KS | |
| 01:08 UTC | HAIL 1 | 1 S Cheney | Sedgwick, KS | |
| 01:08 UTC | HAIL 1 | 2 S Cheney | Sedgwick, KS | |
| 01:21 UTC | TORNADO | 2 N Attica | Harper, KS | |
| 01:30 UTC | TORNADO | 5 Ne Attica | Harper, KS | BRIEF TOUCHDOWN WITH SMALL DEBRIS CLOUD. CORRECTED TIME AND LOCATION. |
| 02:08 UTC | HAIL 1 | Cheney | Sedgwick, 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 March 7, 2009
7 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 7 | 4:13 PM CST | EF0 | Reno, KS | 1.3 | 75 | |||
| March 7 | 4:28 PM CST | EF0 | Reno, KS | 0.8 | 75 | |||
| March 7 | 4:36 PM CST | EF0 | Reno, KS | 0.5 | 75 | |||
| March 7 | 5:15 PM CST | EF0 | Harvey, KS | 0.5 | 75 | |||
| March 7 | 6:18 PM CST | EF0 | Barber, KS | 0.0 | 20 | |||
| March 7 | 7:21 PM CST | EF0 | Harper, KS | 0.5 | 75 | |||
| March 7 | 8:10 PM CST | EF0 | Kingman, KS | 0.7 | 75 |
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.