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EF2 tornado in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma

Tornado April 19, 2023 · Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma

EF2
Rating
15.0 mi
Whole path
2,300 yd
Path width
$4.0M
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Pottawatomie County → Lincoln County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 2,300 yards (1.31 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

The Shawnee Tornado was the seventeenth tornado of this outbreak. This large, mulitple-vortex tornado initially developed near New Hope Road and Gaddy Road just southeast of Bethel Acres. It moved northeast quickly become a large tornado with a width of up to 1.3 miles. The tornado moved northeast into Shawnee, then turned north moving through western and northern portions of Shawnee with damage at Oklahoma Baptist University, areas near the Shawnee Mall near Interstate 40 and Kickapoo Street, and numerous locations in Shawnee. The large tornado continued north and north-northwest producing damage along both Kickapoo Street and Leo Road all the way north to the Lincoln County line. The tornado moved into Lincoln County just west of Kickapoo Street and dissipated soon after.

The wider storm

Broad troughing was present aloft across the Western US during the afternoon/evening of the 19th. An area of surface low-pressure slowly deepened and moved towards north-central Kansas, with dryline extending from central Kansas through western-north Texas by the late afternoon hours. A well-timed lead upper wave, combined with broken insolation, led to the development of a few supercell thunderstorms across central Oklahoma. Multiple instances of large to very large (>2 inches) hail, along with 18 tornadoes, occurred across central Oklahoma.

Began near Tecumseh (35.2720, -97.0000).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1095066. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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