EF2 Tornado — Riley, Kansas

2022-06-11 · near Manhattan, Riley, Kansas

Event narrative

Two surveys were done by NWS for this damage. It appears that a very short path narrow tornado occurred embedded on the northeast flank of small enhanced downburst that created widespread damaging north to northwest winds. Several homes were heavily damaged with the debris field blown to the northeast or approximately perpendicular to the movement. It appears the tornado was narrow and only 25-50 yards at the widest.

Wider weather episode

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.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.1971, -96.5765)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1021894. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.