EF1 tornado, Webster, Kansas, June 14, 2014

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

June 14, 2014

Touchdown

5:27 PM CDT (22:27 UTC)

Lifted

5:34 PM CDT (22:34 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.3 km)

Path width

110 yards (101 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10,000

County

Rooks County

Touchdown point

39.461, -99.461

Lift-off point

39.466, -99.448

Record number

1406141627-01

4 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GID, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 90 mph.

• broken power pole too 110 yds wide
• clump field derbies. also on fence

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

During a month with several rounds of severe weather in this six-county portion of North Central Kansas, what transpired on this Saturday evening into the very early morning of Sunday the 15th was likely one of the most significant severe weather events of the entire 2014 convective season, especially in terms of widespread wind damage that raked from west-to-east across the area in the form of an intense forward-propagating squall line. A few hours prior to these severe winds entering the local area, an isolated supercell storm cluster drifted slowly northeast across parts of Rooks, Phillips and Smith counties before departing into Nebraska, producing one highly-visible, short-track landspout tornado and a few reports of quarter to golf ball size hail. The EF1-rated tornado, which touched down around 530 pm CDT near Webster State Park shortly after storms first initiated, damaged power poles and fencing along its brief path. In terms of hail, the largest reported golf ball size stones fell in the Glade area shortly after the dissipation of the Rooks County tornado. However, in terms of widespread damage, the aforementioned severe squall line that rolled across the six-county area later in the evening was truly the main event. Based on known wind and damage reports (which likely only represented a fraction of the total, individual instances of storm damage across the area), this north-to-south oriented squall line produced a swath of 60-90 MPH gusts through nearly every square mile of North Central Kansas. In addition to several estimated severe wind speeds, a few of the most intense measured gusts included 86 MPH at the Phillipsburg airport and 77 MPH at a home weather station near Webber. Needless to say, a significant amount of wind damage occurred with this squall line as it uprooted or mangled countless trees and likely also damaged several structures. Based on a limited number of damage reports that were received, one of the more newsworthy incidents involved several campers blown over at Webster State Park, along with a roof blown off a cabin. Due to the progressive nature of these storms, rainfall totals across most of North Central Kansas averaged less than 1. ||Breaking down event timing, the initial supercell cluster that produced the landspout tornado in northern Rooks County flared up between 5-6 pm CDT near the leading edge of the invading cold front. As this storm cluster slowly drifted northeast through Smith County, it evolved into a more compact-but-organized discrete supercell that exited northward into Nebraska around 830 pm CDT. This storm's departure ushered in a nearly two-hour lull in local thunderstorm activity, before the leading edges of the incoming, intense squall line raced out of northwest Kansas into Phillips and Rooks counties between 10-11 pm CDT. For the next few hours, this fierce, bowing line raced across the remainder of the six-county area before gradually departing the eastern edges of Jewell and Mitchell counties between 12-1 am CDT, leaving behind only a trailing area of stratiform rain that lingered for a few more hours. ||On the synoptic scale, this was a fairly classic June setup for significant severe, as a progressive mid level shortwave trough kicked out of the Rockies and into the Central Plains, rotating around the southeast periphery of a parent closed low anchored over the Montana/Saskatchewan border area. As this occurred, strengthening and increasingly-diffluent mid-upper southwesterly flow overspread the local area. At the surface, a slow-moving cold front edged southeastward into North Central Kansas during the evening, embedded within an elongated 992-996 millibar low pressure center stretched from western Kansas into eastern Nebraska. During the late-afternoon to mid-evening time frame, temperatures gradually decreased from highs in the low-mid 90s F while dewpoints generally averaged in the mid-60s F. Mesoscale severe weather parameters during the early-mid evening featured 2000-3000 J/kg mixed layer CAPE in the presence of 40-60 knots of 0-6 kilometer deep layer vertical wind shear. As the evening wore on, low level shear intensified as the nose of a 50-60 knot low level jet focused into the area. This severe weather outbreak was well-anticipated a few days in advance at both the local WFO level as well as by the Storm Prediction Center, which already placed much of North Central Kansas in a Moderate Risk on the Day 2 outlooks 24-48 hours in advance and maintained/refined the Moderate Risk area into the Day 1 period.

This tornado touched down approximately 5 miles northwest of Webster State Park. Maximum wind speeds were estimated to be 110 MPH, with broken power poles and damaged fencing reported.

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

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 22:10 UTC and running to 05:00 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. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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 Grand Island radar (KUEX), 129 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:27 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 2014 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.