EF4 Rozel tornado, Kansas, May 18, 2013

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 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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF4

Date

May 18, 2013

Touchdown

7:18 PM CDT (00:18 UTC)

Lifted

7:47 PM CDT (00:47 UTC)

On the ground

29 minutes

Path length

7.0 miles (11.3 km)

Path width

1,100 yards (1006 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$140,000

County

Pawnee County

Touchdown point

38.143, -99.471

Lift-off point

38.231, -99.430

Record number

1305181818-01

36 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS DDC, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF4. The highest wind the damage implies is 178 mph.

• Bent metal pole associated with short path length tornado.
• End point of torndao path.
• Electric line wood poles snapped/broken.
• Damage/uplift to the roof deck and some shingle loss but most trees only with minor damage.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

High instability was in place as an upper level wind maxima moved out of the base of a deep upper trough in the west.

This tornado was well documented by storm chasers, spotters and a research team with portable doppler radar. The tornado did turn north towards the end of it's life cycle. Low end EF4 damage was done to a home along US156. The roof and walls were blown away of this well constructed house. Several large tanks were carried a long distance. There were 2 people inside but they escaped injury by taking shelter. Video shows that sub-vortices within the tornado may have actually had a little stronger wind. The Doppler on wheels that was observing the tornado had near surface measured wind speeds of 165 to 185 MPH.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS DDC issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:17 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:45 UTC and running to 02:35 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:39 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), 66 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:18 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 2013 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are

9 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.