EF1 tornado in Marshall County, Kansas

Another tornado path that was nearly indistinguishable from the widespread straight line wind damage that preceded it into the north side of Blue Rapids. It appears that a tornado did damage along a path that traveled just north of a Georgia Pacific Plant along and just west of highway 77 where it derailed train cars then pushed south into the river bottoms snapping trees. The track became very broad as it approached the river where it appears it transitioned to a damaging downburst surge of 100-105 mph straight line winds across the city of Blue Rapids with the worst damage on the west side of the city.

One large high precipitation supercell formed near the Nebraska Kansas border and tracked south during the evening of June 11th producing widespread damaging straight line winds of 80-110 mph along with several small tornadoes. The majority of property damage was done by straight line winds within what was the rear flank downdraft of the supercell which was moving south southwest. The widespread destructive winds within the RFD often preceded any smaller vortex with the small tornadoes making damage from tornadoes difficult to distinguish from the downbursts and microbursts within the larger RFD swath. We believe there were at least 5 tornadoes that evening all EF0 or EF1. Ironically, the magnitude of damage from straight line winds in spots exceeded that of the smaller tornadoes.