One thing the sunflower State is known for is the amount of tornadoes that roll through the state each year. The tornado alley includes Kansas but it also shifts depending on the year and other factors. The main states of the alley are Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. There are other states added in occasionally like the edge of New Mexico and Colorado, but those states are as bad as the others. For the past sixteen years there have been under twenty tornadoes in New Mexico.
Since 1950 Kansas has been ranked the number one state in the nation of F5 tornadoes, with rotational velocities of 261-318 mph winds. There have been seven F5 tornadoes and all of them have killed at least one person. The deadliest one was in the Cowley County tornado in Udall. This tornado killed 80 people and injured 270. That tornado was in May 15, 1955. Now I will go more into detail about Kansas’s worst tornadoes in history.
The Topeka Tornado; 3rd worst tornado
The Topeka tornado was June 8th, 1966. This tornado killed 16 people and injured 406 people. The total damage was worth $100 million. The main reason the damage was so expensive is because it damaged Washburn University and barely hit the state capital building in Topeka. That damage cost 10 million dollars. The width of the tornado was three quarters of a mile and had the velocity of 200-250 mph and was ranked as a F5 tornado. The tornado also touched the ground and moved 22 miles through the town.
The Greensburg Tornado; 2nd worst tornado
The Greensburg Tornado was an F5 tornado that went for 26 miles at the speeds of 315 mph, the date was May 4th, 2007. The width of the tornado was 1.7 miles, wider than the town itself. Unfortunately it killed 11 people and injured 63 people. The damage of the tornado was $250 million. This beast of a tornado was the first in history to be rated on the new EF5 (Enhanced Frujita Scale). After 95% of the small town named Greensburg got destroyed they decided to rebuild and go green. They get 100 percent of their energy from a small wind farm.
The Udall Tornado; The worst tornado to strike Kansas
Circling back to the deadliest tornado in the history of Kansas, there is the Udall Tornado. This tornado killed 80 people and injured 270 people. This tornado took place on May 25th, 1955. One of the worst things about this tornado was that there were no warnings at all, the town was in shock but couldn’t do anything about it because there was no time left to react. Shortly after 20 percent of the town’s population was gone. There were 170 homes gone and the rest were unlivable. This tornado put everyone at a loss and so many families lost loved ones.
