EF0 tornado, Kensington, Kansas, April 26, 2016

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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 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

EF0

Date

April 26, 2016

Touchdown

7:47 PM CDT (00:47 UTC)

Lifted

7:49 PM CDT (00:49 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Smith County

Touchdown point

39.912, -99.050

Lift-off point

39.916, -99.046

Record number

1604261847-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GID, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.

• Determined from pictures and comments given. EF scale estimated. Width of 100 yards. No known path

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

On Tuesday the 26th, a smattering of severe storms paid a visit to this six-county North Central Kansas area for the second time in three days, resulting in a few reports of large hail up to golf ball size and also the first documented (albeit brief) tornado of 2016 within the local area. Like the event two days prior, the majority of severe weather again targeted Jewell County. There were actually two separate rounds of severe storms on this day, one during the pre-dawn hours and another during the late afternoon/early evening. The early morning storms were classic, elevated hail producers that flared up between 2-5 a.m. CDT, highlighted by a supercell that dumped quarter to golf ball size hail on the town of Jewell for 20 minutes around 3 a.m. CDT. After these early morning storms exited to the north and east by 5 a.m. CDT, most of the day featured a solid lull before the mid/late afternoon redevelopment. During the afternoon/evening event, Jewell County was again the primary action zone as a few severe storms tracked through between 4:30-7:30 p.m. CDT, yielding ping pong ball size hail near Lovewell Reservoir and again dropping quarter size hail in Jewell. As it turned out, the only local severe weather report outside of Jewell County on this day was the aforementioned brief, EF0-rated tornado which touched down shortly before 8 p.m. CDT in a rural area near the Phillips/Smith County line, roughly 10 miles north of Kensington. This tornado caused no known damage as it developed from what appeared to be a tiny supercell storm along the southern edge of a larger storm complex centered to the north in Nebraska. Later in the night, more widespread showers and storms blossomed across North Central Kansas, but these were non-severe and produced only rain and possibly some small hail. Rainfall-wise, the majority of the six-county area averaged well-under 1 inch for the event. However, a fairly narrow corridor of eastern Jewell County registered 24-hour totals of 1.50-3.00, including 2.99 in Jewell and 2.67 near Webber. Most of this rain fell between 6-8 p.m. CDT under a persistent narrow line of strong to severe storms. However, there were no reports of impactful flooding. ||This was a well-anticipated, synoptically evident severe weather event, as a large, deep trough ejected out of the Central/Southern Rockies into the Central/Southern Plains in a neutral-to-slightly negatively-tilted orientation. During the initial round of early morning hailers, the local area was positioned just north of a well-defined surface stationary front stretched from west-east near the Interstate 70 corridor, with convection driven by classic warm air/moisture advection at the nose of a 40 knot low level jet and in the presence of healthy elevated most-unstable CAPE around 2000 J/kg. By the time of afternoon redevelopment, a 996 millibar surface low was positioned just south of North Central Kansas, with the associated quasi-stationary front barely lifting north into the local area. Late afternoon surface observations from Beloit and Smith Center revealed temperatures in the mid-upper 70s F, dewpoints in the low 60s and modest east-southeast breezes. Mesoscale parameters were more than sufficient for severe storms, featuring at least 2000 J/kg mixed-layer CAPE and deep-layer wind shear of 50-60 knots. However, the low-mid level wind profile proved rather inhospitable to longer-lived, discrete supercell storms, instead favoring clusters/line segments. For days leading up to the 26th, there was considerable speculation in some weather circles about this being a major severe weather/tornado outbreak through much of the Central Plains. This perception was fueled when the Storm Prediction Center placed much of central/eastern Kansas under a Moderate Risk on the Day 2 outlooks issued on the 25th and maintained this level 4 category through most of the Day 1 period. As it turned out, although there were numerous reports of primarily large hail in parts of central and eastern Kansas, fortunately a number of factors (including predominant storm mode) held a significant tornado outbreak at bay.

A brief tornado occurred approximately 10 miles north of Kensington. This tornado was viewed by the public and confirmation of the event was provided via a photo. The tornado caused no damage, and remained in the same general area for a few minutes before dissipating.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS GID issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:44 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:55 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:15 UTC and running to 02:00 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, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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), 69 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:45 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 2016 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are

35 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.