Unrated tornado, Boise City, Oklahoma, May 29, 2024

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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

May 29, 2024

Touchdown

12:34 AM CDT (05:34 UTC)

Lifted

12:36 AM CDT (05:36 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Cimarron County

Touchdown point

36.823, -102.648

Lift-off point

36.826, -102.637

Record number

2405292334-01

A wet pattern set up over the Panhandles May 29 through the 31st. Instability in the atmosphere helped to create strong to severe thunderstorms first in the form of discrete cells the night of the 29th into the early AM hours of the 30th. One of which produced a tornado in the western Oklahoma Panhandle. Then subsequent nights disturbances aloft helped create a Mesoscale Convective Complex both on the night of the 30th and again on the 31st. Besides the tornado reported on the 29th this storm in Cimarron County also produced hail up to 1.75��� in diameter. On the next two nights the severe wind gusts reaching upwards of 74 mph. Severe hail was more isolated compared to the winds that were more widespread with lines of storms surging from the northwest to the southeast on the 30th and from the west-northwest to east-southeast on the night of the 31st.

This tornado occurred in open field near the Santa Fe Trail campground in northwest Cimarron County. No damage is known from this tornado. It was observed and captured via photographic evidence by a storm spotter in that area. It was on the ground for at least a minute, before becoming obscured by rain and may have lifted soon after.

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

23 minutes of warning. NWS AMA issued a tornado warning for this county at 05:11 UTC, 23 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 05:45 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 00:39 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 Amarillo radar (KAMA), 196 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 05:32 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 OklahomaEvery tornado in Oklahoma since 1950Warnings in force in Oklahoma nowThe forecast where you are

6 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.