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EF1 tornado in Ellis County, Kansas

Tornado May 23, 2008 · Ellis County, Kansas

EF1
Rating
2.2 mi
Path length
150 yd
Path width
1
Injury
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 150 yards (0.09 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

This tornado produced EF1 damage to outbuildings, a storage tank, power poles and houses in Ellis. A female was injured when she went out to get her horse and was hit by flying debris from the tornado.

The wider storm

An anonymously strong upper level system allowed everything to come together at the surface to produced what is perhaps the biggest tornado outbreak to ever occur in the Dodge City CWA! Fifty-five tornadoes were documented during that afternoon and evening! Some of the tornadoes were very large and damaging. The character of the supercell thunderstorms that day had similarities to the storms that produced the Greensburg tornado a little over a year after. In fact there was one tornado that was just as large and perhaps could have been just as damaging that was headed towards the small Kiowa county town but fortunately turned and dissipated.

Began near Ellis (38.9146, -99.5854).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 109845. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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