EF0 tornado in Kiowa County, Kansas

Tornado December 25, 2016 · Kiowa County, Kansas

EF0

Rating

3.2 mi

Whole path

30 yd

Path width

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 30 yards (0.02 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 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 QLCS tornado moved out of Ford County at 10:31 AM. As it moved across Kiowa county at a rapid rate, it struck an outbuilding. This large cattle barn or quonset was damaged. Several feed bunks were lifted and carried west and others rolled out of the pens. Large round hay bales were blown off a stack and rolled 50 yards in several different directions. A 30 yard stretch of fencing was broken with dried vegetation removed from that area.

The wider storm

A very anomalous weather set-up was in place on Christmas Day across the area. Early morning dew points had risen to around 60 degrees F which is extremely usual and perhaps unprecedented for southwest Kansas for December 25. A squall line moved across the entire area and for a while produced QLCS brief tornadoes of which a few caused damage. High wind behind the Pacific front and dryline was observed during the afternoon.

Began near Mullinville (37.5001, -99.5565).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF0 Seward County EF0 Ford County EF0 Kiowa County EF0 Comanche County EF0 Rush County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 672710. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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