2019 Linwood tornado

Tornado summary

Initial EF2 tornado and Silver Lining Tours incident

Prior to the formation of the EF4 Linwood tornado, a preceding EF2 tornado from the same supercell storm impacted areas east of Overbrook, along the border between Osage and Douglas Counties, Kansas. This tornado struck a convoy of vans operated by Silver Lining Tours, a touring organization specialized in storm chasing. A dozen people, mainly tour guests and operators, were injured as this extremely rainwrapped and strong tornado threw vehicles around without warning. This significant tornado the supercell spawned, was estimated to have winds of 115 mph (185 km/h), and lasted from 5:54 PM CDT (22:54 UTC), to 6:06 PM CDT (23:06 UTC). The storm itself stayed over rural areas, impacting mainly trees and a few farmsteads. It traveled along a path 10.69 mi (17.20 km) long, and 200 yd (0.11 mi; 0.18 km) wide.

Formation of EF4 tornado near Lone Star and Lake

As the initial EF2 tornado was nearing the end of its life, a second tornado touched down next to Lone Star Lake, and immediately became cloaked in rain at 6:05 PM CDT (23:05 UTC). This new tornado intensified from EF0−EF1 intensity along County Road 1 East, before absorbing the circulation of the first tornado. After crossing North 750th Road, south-southeast of Lone Star, the new tornado became intense as it intensified to EF3 intensity, debarking trees along Chicken Creek with winds upwards of 140 mph (230 km/h). To the northeast, the tornado expanded in width but also weakened slightly, as a swath of EF2 tree damage occurred before the tornado restrengthened to EF3 intensity again. Along East 1000 Road, the tornado impacted a home with winds estimated at 160 mph (260 km/h), leveling the residence and destroying a garage that was properly bolted to its sill plates. Across the road, trees were debarked and outbuildings were completely destroyed by the tornado at EF2−EF3 intensity.

Outskirts of Lawrence and northeastern Douglas County

The large and shrouded wedge tornado continued to move across portions of central Douglas County at EF2 intensity, until it was closing in on US 59, south of Lawrence. Just before crossing the highway, the tornado caused exterior wall and roof damage to two homes along North 1000 Road with low-end EF3 winds of 138 mph (222 km/h). As the tornado was about to pass over the highway, storm chaser and meteorologist Reed Timmer, alongside Team Dominator, launched a rocket probe from a specialized interceptor vehicle. The rocket was launched into the tornado and recorded winds of 190 mph (310 km/h) within the storm's circulation, while also recording barometric pressure drops. Shortly after crossing US 59, the tornado impacted a cul-de-sac, where one home sustained severe EF3 damage, as estimated winds of 145 mph (233 km/h) tore through. To the northeast along North 1100 Road, two residencies were impacted at EF3 intensity, with one of the homes heavily destroyed, and a pickup truck that was rolled into a shed by mid-range EF3 winds of 150 mph (240 km/h). At around 6:11 PM CDT (23:11 UTC) the National Weather Service WFO in Topeka, issued a PDS tornado warning for areas in northeastern Douglas County. The warning was issued due to the potentially life-threatening situation created by the tornado. Seven minutes later, the WFO upgraded the severity level, and issued a tornado emergency at 6:18 PM CDT (23:18 UTC).

Weakening to EF2 strength, the tornado impacted the far southeastern outskirts of Lawrence as it crossed K-10. The tornado only impacted a few structures, and mostly trees as it paralleled the highway at EF0−EF1 intensity. After leaving the Lawrence area, crossing a highway interchange, the tornado continued into open farmland and caused EF1 damage trees in the area. Shortly after crossing the three-way junction connecting both North 1400 and East 1850 Roads, the tornado rapidly attained EF3 intensity as it struck a daycare center. The director, alongside her children and three employees, were inside when the tornado struck. The walls of the daycare collapsed, and other parts of the building were destroyed by 145 mph (233 km/h) winds. From this point onward the tornado stayed mostly over open fields, though occasionally causing EF3 damage to farmsteads and homes northwest of Eudora, and other parts of northeastern Douglas County, primarily to a few homes and trees.

Leavenworth County, western Linwood and later demise

Upon crossing the Kansas River into Leavenworth County, the National Weather Service WFO in Kansas City, Missouri, followed in part with their Topeka, Kansas counterpart, by issuing another PDS tornado warning for De Soto, Reno, and Linwood at 6:20 PM CDT (23:20 UTC). Approximately fourteen minutes later, the Kansas City office too issued from their forecasting area a tornado emergency for the city's metro area, at 6:34 PM CDT (23:34 UTC). The heavily rainwrapped tornado continued to go along the meandering river at EF2 intensity for around 3.5 mi (5.6 km), before it impacted the western neighborhoods of Linwood.

Along Golden Road, the tornado suddenly became violent as it destroyed an anchored home at EF4 strength, with estimated winds of 170 mph (270 km/h). Sill plates that were secured with anchoring bolts to the foundation, were ripped out by the tornado. Thereafter, the storm weakened to EF3 intensity, as it hit two neighboring homes along K-32, heavily destroying them with winds ranging from 140–152 mph (225–245 km/h). North to northeast of town, the tornado continued causing significant EF2 damage as it impacted the Free State Growers wholesaler and leveled it. One employee at the site took shelter underneath a tractor, and survived. Major damage persisted on 198th Street, as a residence was destroyed alongside stubbed trees with approximately 135 mph (217 km/h) winds. The last area where EF2+ damage occurred was along 170th Street, where a house had all of its exterior walls torn down by corresponding 122 mph (196 km/h) winds. For the remainder of its life, the tornado caused EF0–EF1 damage to homes and outbuildings before dissipating west of Bonner Springs, Kansas, at 7:00 PM CDT (00:00 UTC).

After the Linwood tornado dissipated, the supercell responsible for the EF4 tornado crossed from Kansas into Missouri, passing over the northern suburbs of Kansas City. The cell afterwards produced a third significant tornado, rated EF2, that impacted areas in between Kearney and Excelsior Springs, before soon dissipating.

Aftermath

The Linwood event was the first time a violent tornado struck the state of Kansas in over 3 years, when a large and violent EF4 tornado struck Dickinson County on May 25, 2016. Throughout the 2019 season, this was the third and last tornado to be rated that high in the United States. The first of the prior two EF4 tornadoes occurred on March 3, where it struck Lee County, Alabama. The other EF4 tornado happened a day prior to the Kansas storm on May 27, taking place in Montgomery County, Ohio, within the Dayton metropolitan area. Alongside that, the Linwood tornado was also the last violent tornado of the decade to occur in the United States throughout the 2010s. For the Kansas City area alone, the Linwood tornado was the strongest to occur since F4 tornadoes impacted the region in 2003.

Damage and casualties

National Weather Service storm assessments

A day after the Linwood tornado occurred, the National Weather Service forecasting office covering the Kansas City area, located in Pleasant Hill, Missouri, released their preliminary results of their damage surveys of the tornado. The tornado was given a rating of low-end EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with estimated winds of 170 miles per hour (270 km/h) along a path of 31.82 miles (51.21 km). The tornado also was a mile wide or 1,760 yards (1.61 km). A supposed count of 18 people were reportedly injured during the event in this post, and no fatalities occurred with this tornado. Finalized reports for the tornado per the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) kept the wind and width estimates, but shortened the path length by 2.75 miles (4.43 km), down to 29.07 miles (46.78 km). The tornado also injured a total of 4 people, compared to the preliminary estimate of 18.

Regional impact

Kansas City International Airport was closed for a brief period as debris was littered 47 miles (76 km) after the tornado, causing flights to be delayed. More than 13,000 customers were left without power after the storms passed. In Douglas County, monetary estimates from the tornado were up to US$22 million. Around 160 buildings, including homes and other structures, were searched through by emergency personnel, with an estimated 40 of the searched structures sustaining heavy damage. 25 of them were considered moderately impacted. In Leavenworth County, the tornado caused an estimated US$26 million in damages. 50 structures alongside one business were damaged, with 19 of them destroyed. Linwood and the surrounding areas suffered the worst of the destruction during the event.

Recovery process

Federal efforts

During the spring and early summer months of 2019, Kansas was impacted by severe storms, which were responsible for damaging straight-line winds and tornadoes. Flooding, alongside mudslides and landslides were also brought up in parts of the state, as part of the storms that went across the area. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), under the first presidency of Donald Trump, issued a disaster declaration (FEMA-4449-DR) for the state on June 20, noted in a six-month recovery report that US$861,037.79 in Public Assistance funds were provided for the state's various projects. US$581,000 was provided for state-wide projects, while the remainder was given to Jefferson County. Approximately 53 counties throughout Kansas, including Leavenworth County were covered in the federal disaster declaration, with it especially due to the EF4 tornado on May 28.

Local feats

In Douglas County, the local emergency management opened up a so-called "volunteer reception center", for individuals that can register themselves to help and give relief to the victims affected by the tornadoes. People from outside of Douglas County, and even outside of Kansas came in to support those in need. On May 29–30, residents of Basehor dropped off supplies and donations for the impacted victims at the campus of Basehor-Linwood High School. Ashley Razak, the school district's communications coordinator, stated that donations filled in some 16 truck beds for the survivors in Linwood. Student groups at Basehor-Linwood High School, such as the football and volleyball teams, offered to volunteer during the cleanup efforts following the tornado. At the impacted areas, a mobile medical unit was set up at Linwood Elementary School.

Months and years later

After the storm, many residents of Linwood were surprised at how the city still was left standing. The recovery process was for some of the townspeople challenging. One family, the Duffins, decided to move away from their home in Linwood, to nearby Lawrence. They were one of only a handful of people who chose to leave the town, after losing everything due to the tornado. Mayor Brian Christensen, was happy for appearance of volunteers that pitched in to help clean up the debris. Despite the positivity, there was doubt at first if Linwood would be given the aid needed from FEMA, and that fact that the tornado caused major economic impacts on the town. “All we have is a gas station and a cabinet shop," he spoke in a KCUR-FM report months later. Christensen also cited that "There is no silver lining for Linwood.”. The mayor assumed that the lack of anything besides the aforementioned gas station and cabinet shop, it would make builders and repairmen disinterested with building projects, as he compared his small city to disaster sites that were successful. Mark Illausky, the owner of the Free State Growers greenhouse business in Linwood, stated that while some days it felt so quick in the reconstruction, others felt like there was still a long road ahead. The company stood in the community since the 1970s, with Illausky having bought it a decade before the 2019 storm. Regardless of the destruction and financial losses, the business owner stood calm and confident, with managing plans he did with 35 of his workers to get Free State Growers back up again. “Next year, all of this is going to be done and behind us and hopefully we won’t be doing any construction and we’ll just be growing plants,” stated Illausky to KSHB-TV during an interview a year after. The greenhouse owner expected that for next year, the business would stick to growing and selling its plant-based products to other commercial stores such as grocery and hardware stores, rather than needing additional rebuilding efforts. An employee who was working at the time and took shelter when the tornado struck, continued to work at the company alongside with the tractor being used they sheltered underneath. After five years, Linwood largely rebuilt its damaged structures. Mayor Christensen mentioned that the old elementary school was converted into a tornado shelter.

In a 2021 report through the American Meteorological Society's 101st Annual Meeting, the 2019 EF4 tornado, alongside the initial EF2 tornado merger near Overbrook, were considered a nightmare scenario according to two NWS Topeka meteorologists. One of the factors was that half of the meteorologists working for the nearby WFO lived in Lawrence, causing much stress among the workers stationed there. The other reason was that EF4 tornado, and its EF2 predecessor, were extremely rainwrapped due to the nature of the parent supercell thunderstorm, which was a high-precipitation kind. This made warning operations and storm spotting more difficult to process, alongside post-analyses. The 2019 event sparked much interest in the meteorological world. Future examinations was to be done in detail through ground and aerial survey data, but also radar in the base and dual-polarization forms.

University of Kansas field engineering studies

House-to-house examinations

Three days after the tornado on May 31, 2019, structural engineers from the University of Kansas (KU), funded by the National Science Foundation's Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance Network (StEER), conducted 271 door-to-door assessments of homes within a three-day timespan. The engineers discovered that many of the properties impacted by the tornado along its track, had various structural fail points that contributed to their destruction. Structures either lacked proper connections between the roof and walls, wall sheathing or sufficient anchoring to prevent devastating building failures. Some homes were reportedly glued to the foundation, which did not provide protection against the tornado's uplift and lateral forces. This entire documentation of the structural assessments was recorded by KU engineer Elaina Sutley, with her interview featured on the PBS Terra show Weathered.

Technological damage surveying

In December 2019, KU engineers and experts presented their works at the American Geophysical Union's 2019 Fall Meeting, in San Francisco, California. Alongside their exhibitions, they published a research paper onto the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System, a digital library portal that is part of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After the Linwood tornado event, a quick post-disaster team of engineers was dispatched and at the scene used technological methods in the aftermath, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for aerial surveys, alongside traditional ground-based human assessments. It is thought that UAVs have extra advantages than human-based surveyors, due to more efficient usages and costs. An example is that a UAV, with a mounted camera, is able to take ground to roof damage photos in a more timely method. However, such systems are limited by the lack of actionable analytics that immediate damage surveyors at a damage scene can offer. With the support from 3D-based mapping programs, and the rise of artificial intelligence, a new framework for post-tornado assessments is very capable to become a training ground that will benefit most first responders. Structural engineers already began constructing and validating these frameworks based on the aftermath of the 2019 tornado.

Post-May 2019 field research

In a research field study published by analysts from KU and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), on the ResearchGate platform, engineers discovered notable instances during the recovery process in the wake and the months after the Linwood tornado. After completing their 271 door-to-door assessments in late-May 2019, from November to December that same year, StEER researchers reported that during the post six-month recovery process, some 44% of the assessed homes that were examined by KU engineers had completed repairs, with 64% of the residencies being occupied. Other findings during the mid to late-2019 period were that some 73% of the tenants had no power for more than one day and nearly 30% missed a week of work. Another instance was that 96% of respondents in the paper in this time frame had home insurance, but only 78% received a payout with an average of 28 days for the first payment. Despite support from FEMA, no individual assistance was recorded to take place at any surveyed household. Four homes received loans for repairs from the U.S. Small Business Administration, which ultimately took an average amount of 140 days while in comparison financial aid from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) took a more faster approach, at 39 days with cleanup and family assistance taking around an amount of 10 days. A dozen households were financially helped out by NGOs, with 47 and 15 others receiving cleanup and family assistance. The post-six month recovery also noted on other findings, such as risk perception, sheltering behavior, and building code perceptions.

Listed below are reports from tenants of residential building damage and loss of utilities during the assessments.

Resolution 2025-37

From 2019 until late 2025, Leavenworth County, Kansas, unlike its county seat Leavenworth, had not adopted any sort of modern building codes, before and in the years since the tornado. Elaina Sutley mentioned the county's absence of regulations in unincorporated areas, during her appearance on Weathered in 2021. On November 12, 2025 the county adopted, and modified the International Code Council's 2012 International Residential Code (IRC). The passage of the IRC was under Resolution 2025-37, which applied only for structures built after Leavenworth County ratified the regulation.

Team Dominator meteorological research

SRV Dominator rocket deployment

Launching of Dorothy

As the tornado was south of the city of Lawrence, Reed Timmer and Team Dominator launched a custom-built meteorological probe attached to a miniature rocket, which was designed by Canadian engineer Mark Simpson, from their Dominator 3 storm research vehicle at 6:17:33 PM CDT (23:17:33 UTC). The rocket was launched into the tornado's inflow region and lofted up to 34,000 feet (10,000 m) within the tornadic circulation and sampled the core flow.

Probing the storm

At 7.9 seconds after its launch, one hertz data showed live data that the probe's parachute deployed at 437 metres (1,434 ft) above ground level (AGL), and entered the northwestern side of the then ongoing wedge tornado. The research group continued on US 59 to maintain communication with the probe, until connection was lost at 6:25:09 PM CDT (23:05:09 UTC) as the probe entered the tropopause at a distance of 10.4 kilometres (6.5 mi), and at an altitude of 10,680 metres (35,040 ft) above sea level (ASL), with a maximum height of 11,914 metres (39,088 ft) ASL as the probe entered the upper troposphere before descending. The probe was recovered a day later on the grounds of a church within the city of Leavenworth, after having traveled a distance of 51.1 kilometres (31.8 mi) to the northeast throughout its entire pseudo-Lagrangian flight.

Recorded data and results

Throughout its stay within the circulation of the large EF4 tornado, the probe recorded a maximum pressure deficit of -113.5 hPa (millibar) at 475 metres (1,558 ft) ASL, which dropped to less than -20 hPa by a height of 3,760 metres (12,340 ft) ASL in the storm's mesocyclone. Alongside that, the probe caught instantaneous winds of 85.1 metres per second (306 km/h; 190 mph) during the first rotation, at 858 metres (2,815 ft) ASL. Measurements of the storm's updraft were also taken in account, where a 1-second gust of 65 metres per second (230 km/h; 150 mph) was documented at an altitude of 2,171.3 metres (7,124 ft) ASL. Temperature, relative humidity, GPS, acceleration, gyroscope, and magnetometer sensor data were all recorded at real-time as the probe was inflight for roughly 30 minutes in total.

Team Dominator was the first ever storm chasing, and scientific research team to deploy the usage of a meteorological rocket probe into a tornado, to collect data that was not accessible before.

New method of intensity measurements

Tornadoes as a phenomenon usually destroy any type of measuring instruments, due to their extreme winds and large amount of lofted debris, that can act as high-speed, and potentially deadly projectiles. This new way of direct wind measurements unlocks capabilities to understand tornado intensity that was never recorded before, aside from usual proxies such as damage assessments.