Draft:2019 Lawrence-Linwood tornado: Difference between revisions

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• Comment: The Tornado Summary and Aftermath sections were removed because they had no content. The tornado appears to be notable, but I would be willing to accept if you added content to the Tornado Summary and Aftermath sections. Nice job so far! 🌀Hurricane Wind and Fire (talk) (contribs)🔥 06:46, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

violent tornado, rated EF4 in the Kansas City metro area in May of 2019

During the early evening hours of May 28th, 2019, a large, heavily rain-wrapped and violent wedge tornado struck the western Kansas City metropolitan area, across Douglas and Leavenworth counties in eastern Kansas. It was the second EF4 tornado to occur during a prolonged late-May tornado outbreak sequence, with the first one occurring a day prior in Ohio. In its wake, the tornado caused $26 million in damages in Leavenworth County, with southern Lawrence and Linwood taking the worst damage during the event. According to the National Weather Service weather forecasting offices (WFOs) in both Topeka, Kansas and Pleasant Hill, Missouri, the tornado was ultimately rated as low-end EF4 with estimated winds of 170 mph, though a storm chasing research team found winds of 187 mph from a rocket probe.^[2][3] It tracked for just over 29 miles within its 55-minute lifespan, causing 18 injuries but fortunately no fatalities before dissipating west of Bonner Springs.^[1]

This became the first violent tornado in Kansas, since another EF4 tornado struck back in 2016. Throughout the 2019 season, this was the third and last tornado to be rated that high in the United States, as well was it the last such tornado of the decade in the country.

On the morning of May 28, 2019, a closed mid-level low pressure system and an accompanying jet streak overspread the central United States, creating a highly favorable large-scale environment for severe weather.^[5] The mid-level system promoted surface cyclogenesis across the central Plains, resulting in a deepening surface low. In response, rich Gulf moisture rapidly advected northward, reaching as far north as southern Iowa and overspreading much of Kansas.^[6] As moisture increased across the region, forecasters at the Storm Prediction Center identified a growing potential for a significant severe weather outbreak, prompting the issuance of a moderate risk with a 15% probability of significant tornadoes.^[7]

By the afternoon, extreme convective instability and wind shear were present across central and northeastern Kansas. Surface-based CAPE values approached 2,000 J/kg, while effective storm-relative helicity values reached nearly 300 m²/s², indicative of a strongly sheared environment supportive of rotating supercells.^[8] A dryline was established across central Kansas and served as a focus for convective initiation later in the day. However, a discrete supercell developed farther east within the warm sector along a northward-lifting warm front. This supercell initially produced an EF2 tornado to the east of Overbrook, and to the south-southwest of Lone Star Lake before continuing northeastward, and intensifying into the long-track EF4 tornado near Linwood.^[9] In this region, enhanced low-level shear and backed surface winds—associated with the surface low positioned southwest of the warm front—further increased tornado potential. This combination of extreme instability, strong vertical wind shear, and favorable boundary interactions created an environment highly conducive to significant and violent long-track tornadoes.^[10]