Tornadoes · United States · Kansas · 2019
EF1 tornado, Marysville to Home, Kansas, May 24, 2019
From Marysville to Home, this EF1 tornado ran 9.6 miles across Marshall County on May 24, 2019, touching down at 3:40 AM CDT and reaching 50 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
- May 24, 2019
- Touchdown
- 3:40 AM CDT (08:40 UTC)
- Lifted
- 3:50 AM CDT (08:50 UTC)
- On the ground
- 10 minutes
- Path length
- 9.6 miles (15.4 km)
- Path width
- 50 yards (46 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Marshall County
- Touchdown point
- 39.825, -96.688
- Lift-off point
- 39.882, -96.522
- Record number
- 1905240240-01
The damage survey
4 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS TOP, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.
- 3000 gallon gas tank was tossed across Highway 36 into the Marysville Country Club golf course.
- Roof was peeled back on a farm shed.
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
What the Weather Service recorded
A cluster of severe t-storms moved across parts of north central and northeast Kansas during the early morning hours of May 24th. Two small tornadoes did occur and produced damaged to parts of the city of Marysville. The storm produced another small tornado in Nemaha county. Both were rated EF1 based on damage indicators provided by EM and other sources of imagery.
Photos submitted show damage along a nearly 10 mile long track from just southwest of Marysville through parts of the city then into rural Marshall county. Damage indicators and degree of damage suggest EF1 intensity with winds to around 105 mph.
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.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 06:38 UTC and running to 10:21 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15:00 UTC | 12:00 UTC | Flash Flood Watch | TOP |
| 00:42 UTC | 05:00 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Watch | TOP |
| 00:57 UTC | 01:31 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | TOP |
| 01:46 UTC | 02:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | TOP |
| 06:38 UTC | 10:21 UTC | Tornado Watch | TOP |
| 09:04 UTC | 09:21 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | TOP |
| 21:44 UTC | 23:48 UTC | Flood Warning | TOP |
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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:33 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.
Topeka, KS (KFOE), 00:00Z
8.7 hours before the tornado, 126 km from the path. May 24, 2019.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 290 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -125 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 176 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 800 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 53 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 25 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 185 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 247 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.2
- Supercell composite
- 5.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.1 K/km
Topeka, KS (KFOE), 12:00Z
3.3 hours after it, 126 km from the path. May 24, 2019.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1022 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -72 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 618 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 779 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 48 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 33 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 232 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 210 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 1.0
- Supercell composite
- 3.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.8 K/km
The radar
The Topeka radar (KTWX), 100 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 08:41 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07:54 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 2 Nnw Beattie | Marshall, KS | 5 INCH TREE LIMBS DOWN. RADAR ESTIMATED TIME. |
| 08:20 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 5 Wnw Oneida | Nemaha, KS | DELAYED REPORT...A HOME WAS DAMAGE AT THIS LOCATION. LARGE TREES WERE SNAPPED. A GRAIN BIN WAS THROWN FROM ITS BASE. A SHED WAS ALSO DESTROYED. |
| 08:45 UTC | TORNADO | Marysville | Marshall, KS | DELAYED REPORT...NUMEROUS REPORTS OF DAMAGE ACROSS THE CITY HAVE BEEN REPORTED INCLUDING THE FOLLOWING: TWO 30,000 GALLON GAS TANKS WERE BLOWN ACROSS HIGHWAY 36, NUMEROUS POWER LINES AND TREES SNAPPED WITHIN THE CITY, A |
| 08:50 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 1 E Marysville | Marshall, KS | EMPTY STORAGE TANKS FLIPPED ACROSS ROAD. TIME ESTIMATED FROM RADAR. |
| 08:50 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | Marysville | Marshall, KS | SEVERAL LARGE TREE BRANCHES DOWN IN THE CITY OF MARYSVILLE. TIME ESTIMATED FROM RADAR. |
| 08:52 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 3 Ene Marysville | Marshall, KS | POWER POLE AND TREE DAMAGE NEAR 12TH AND JAYHAWK. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2019 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of May 24, 2019
18 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 24 | 4:19 AM CDT | EF1 | Nemaha, KS | 5.9 | 50 | |||
| May 24 | 12:33 PM CDT | EF1 | McDonough, IL | 7.8 | 50 | |||
| May 24 | 12:41 PM CDT | EF1 | McDonough, IL | 1.9 | 30 | |||
| May 24 | 1:10 PM CDT | EF0 | Fulton, IL | 1.2 | 20 | $10,000 | ||
| May 24 | 4:19 PM CDT | EF1 | Butler, KS | 1.4 | 75 | |||
| May 24 | 4:53 PM CDT | Unrated | Butler, KS | 0.2 | 50 | |||
| May 24 | 5:24 PM CDT | EF1 | Barnes, ND | 4.1 | 150 | |||
| May 24 | 6:11 PM CDT | EF0 | Barnes, ND | 0.2 | 75 | |||
| May 24 | 6:20 PM CDT | EF0 | Steele, ND | 4.5 | 150 | |||
| May 24 | 6:35 PM CDT | EF0 | Jackson, OK | 0.5 | 20 | $20,000 | ||
| May 24 | 6:36 PM CDT | EF1 | Johnson, IA | 10.8 | 75 | |||
| May 24 | 7:22 PM CDT | EF0 | Mahnomen, MN | 6.6 | 200 | |||
| May 24 | 7:27 PM CDT | EF0 | Cedar, IA | 0.0 | 10 | |||
| May 24 | 7:30 PM CDT | EF1 | Mahnomen, MN | 3.5 | 200 | |||
| May 24 | 8:00 PM CDT | EF0 | Jackson, MO | 0.3 | 50 | |||
| May 24 | 8:08 PM CDT | EF0 | Jackson, MO | 0.7 | 25 | |||
| May 24 | 8:19 PM CDT | EF0 | Lafayette, MO | 2.7 | 40 | |||
| May 24 | 8:40 PM CDT | EF0 | Vernon, WI | 0.1 | 20 | $1,000 |
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.