EF0 tornado, Melrose to Mackie, Kansas, May 6, 2024

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

May 6, 2024

Touchdown

11:13 PM CDT (04:13 UTC)

Lifted

11:15 PM CDT (04:15 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

2.7 miles (4.3 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$64,000

County

Cherokee County

Touchdown point

37.210, -94.897

Lift-off point

37.237, -94.863

Record number

2405062213-01

15 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SGF and NWS TSA, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 81 mph.

• Swath of trees uprooted or snapped.
• Trees uprooted to the east, northeast and north
• Trees uprooted and turkey barn roof pulled back
• A few branches were broken

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

A shortwave trough and an associated cold front pushed through far southeast Kansas during the late evening hours on May 6, 2024. Thunderstorms developed along the front, growing upscale to a linear storm mode by the time they reached southeast Kansas. This line of thunderstorms produced a swath of damaging winds, along with two EF-0 tornadoes in Cherokee County before continuing into the Missouri Ozarks.

A NWS Survey team confirmed that an intermittent EF-0 tornado with maximum winds of 80 mph caused damage to multiple barns and numerous uprooted or snapped trees. This is an extension of a tornado out of Ottawa County, OK that occurred on the night of May 6.

A NWS survey team determined that a tornado touched down to the northwest of Columbus near the intersection of NW Center Star and NW 40th St, downing trees in a convergent to rotational manner as it tracked northeast. As the tornado neared NW 30th St, several outbuildings were damaged to destroyed, with another barn on NW Lawton Rd experiencing door damage on its southeast and east sides. The tornado then destroyed one barn and damaged another as it crossed NW Belleview Road before dissipating.

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 01:41 UTC and running to 05:56 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 00:50 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 Springfield radar (KSGF), 131 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:14 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 2024 tornado in KansasEvery tornado in Kansas since 1950Warnings in force in Kansas nowThe forecast where you are

40 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.