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EF2 tornado in Riley County, Kansas

Tornado June 11, 2022 · Riley County, Kansas

EF2
Rating
0.3 mi
Path length
50 yd
Path width
$10.0M
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 50 yards (0.03 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

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.

The wider storm

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.

Began near Manhattan (39.1971, -96.5765).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

6 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1021894. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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