EF2 tornado in Meade County, Kansas

Tornado November 16, 2015 · Meade County, Kansas

EF2

Rating

51.3 mi

Whole path

2,000 yd

Path width

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 2,000 yards (1.14 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

This extremely wide tornado moving at 50 MPH moved out of Seward county at 18:06. It passed across almost the same identical area that the May 24th tornado took. This tornado heavily damaged trees, a home, pivot irrigation sprinklers and outbuildings. It moved into Gray county at 18:34.

The wider storm

An unusually strong November severe weather episode occurred across the region. A very strong upper level low approached with with strong winds aloft. An unusually high amount of moisture and unseasonably unstable airmass were transported north into Kansas. Storms developed along a dry line but quickly moved off the dryline and became supercellular. Large, long tracked and rapidly moving tornadoes occurred along with instances of large and damaging hail.

Began near Plains (37.2834, -100.6453).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF2 Lane County EF2 Gray County EF1 Ness County EF1 Trego County EF1 Comanche County EF1 Meade County EF0 Grant County EF0 Finney County EF0 Trego County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 609660. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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