EF2 tornado, Globe to Eudora, Kansas, May 28, 2019

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

May 28, 2019

Touchdown

5:49 PM CDT (22:49 UTC)

Lifted

6:06 PM CDT (23:06 UTC)

On the ground

17 minutes

Path length

10.7 miles (17.2 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

12

Counties

Osage and Douglas counties

Touchdown point

38.754, -95.519

Lift-off point

38.840, -95.354

Record number

1905281649-01

150 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS TOP, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 160 mph.

• Trunks snapped, outbuilding garage collapsed--poor construction.
• Large tree uprooted pointing ne
• Trees uprooted laying toward east. Large branches snapped.
• Large branche--trunk snapped pointing NNE.

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

A high precipitation supercell t-storm developed during the afternoon of May 28th across Lyon County Kansas and tracked northeast through the evening producing several tornadoes. The strongest tornado was an EF4 violent tornado that tracked just south of Lawrence Kansas northeast into Leavenworth county Kansas. No fatalities occurred due to the tornadoes with around 17 injuries reported with most of those associated with vehicles that were chasing the storms.

NWS employees surveyed the track and found damage beginning around 2 miles southeast of Overbrook that continued northeast into Douglas county. The sporadic damage path continued to just east southeast of Lone Star Lake in Douglas County where it merged with a larger circulation that eventually become the long track violent tornado. This tornado did impact vehicles in the path of the tornado resulting in several injuries.

This tornado appears to have formed just east of Lone Star Lake around 605 pm CDT where it absorbed a smaller circulation and associated tornado as it intensified and move northeast across Douglas county including areas just south and southeast of the city of Lawrence. The tornado became wide and intense as it moved south of Lawrence and crossed highway 10 before moving just north of Eudora and over the Kansas river into Leavenworth county. The damage path was one half to one mile at times with the most intense damage surveyed in the high end EF3 range which suggests winds of 150 to 160 mph. The tornado ended in Leavenworth county around 7 pm CDT with a path of around 28 miles total. The tornado did produce EF4 damage in Leavenworth county around Linwood Kansas.

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

24 minutes of warning. NWS TOP issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:25 UTC, 24 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:56 UTC and running to 02:36 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.

Topeka (Foe) (FOE), 26 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Topeka radar (KTWX), 72 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:47 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 2019 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are

15 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.