1990-03-13: Hesston Kansas tornado outbreak

[Mark Blue]

Here's a schematic of the path for each tornado on 03/13/90. This was one of my favorite past events. That footage on the 3rd link above was incredible. Right when the water tower comes into the picture there are houses that appear to just explode into nothingness. Amazing.

 

[Tim Marshall]

Missed it

March 3, 1990: I was preparing to leave the country the next day and missed this event. So, this day makes my top ten list of bad chase forecast decisions. tm

 

[Jon Davies]

13 March 1990 Hesston Tornado

The Hesston KS tornado was 20 years ago this week. The Hesston outbreak on 3/13/90 signaled a big end to a period of several years of below normal significant tornado activity in the plains, and set the tone for a very active period in Kansas during the early 1990s. That day certainly left a lasting impression on my meteorological life.

Stan Finger and the Wichita Eagle have an excellent article today about the Hesston tornado at:
http://www.kansas.com/2010/03/07/1213543/1990-tornadoes-increased-awareness.html

Stan also has some material on his web site at:
http://blogs.kansas.com/weather/

 

[Doug Ott]

Was anyone chasing in nebraska that day? The long tracked tornado in nebraska would have past within 10 miles from I lived. I wasn t chasing at that time in my life. Too young. Figured it would be hard to make it there on my bike. I have never seen pictures of that storm and just curious if any chasers caught pics of the long tracked one.

 

[Jason Bolt]

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ict/?n=hesston

There is actually a story about this on ICT right now.

 

[Kevin Walters]

Warm front event for Iowa on this date. An F4 tornado hit Worthington in the Eastern part of the state. There was very good video from the Mississippi river area in which the home of the person taking the video was heavily damaged. At one point he shoots video looking almost straight up into the updraft itself. He takes cover as trees snap and debris begins to fall from the sky.

 

[Ryan Pfannkuch]

For the Nebraska side of the story, NWS Hastings recently posted their own excellent web story about this event, INCLUDING 3 short home video clips of F3/F4 tornadoes that I'm guessing most of us haven't seen before. This includes the one with the 124-mile path length.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=gid&storyid=48406&source=0

I believe 11 F1-F4 tornadoes ravaged what is now the Hastings CWA on this day (office was in G. Island at the time), which is just incredible. Nothing has come close to this kind of day since then in these parts.

Obviously I am geographically biased here, but feel it is important to emphasize that Hesston was only one part of the tornado story on 3-13-90.

 

[Brian Stertz]

The C. Nebraska tornado outbreak was an amazing one....had fairly cool temps...but many long lived tornadoes that day. My friend who was a traveling sales rep for Remington was in Grand Island that day and saw 10 tornadoes personally....including that multiple vortex one at close range near the town of Alda. His pics were amazing ones...with 4 vorticity tendrils at one point. The shear near the surface low, warm front, and the left front quad of the jet made for some wild times that day in C. Nebraska.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Good grief... I can't believe this was 20 years ago exactly to this date. I feel old. Unfortunately I was not able to chase... I was working a day shift at the Tonopah Test Range (1000 miles away), but everyone knew this was going to be a big day and we watched it via DIFAX and teletype (SPC storm reports) as it unfolded. I still have those charts in storage.

Tim

 

[Danny Neal]

One of the events I wish I wasn't too young to chase (I was only 2 1/2 lol) As I look at the track map posted above it is interesting to see a tornado hit Moore, Norman, (Purcell?) area on this day, yet I haven't heard of to many accounts of this. Anyone here have a recollection of those tornadoes to the south?

 

[afischer]

Wow, amazing videos of the Webster/Nuckolls co. F4 Ryan... I hadn't seen those before. That tor definitely falls in the far bottom part of the sfc T/Td distribution for a very long-tracked violent tornado, with about 66/59F (at best) in its inflow environment. The rash of sig tors in the EAR-GRI corridor had even lower T/Td than that. Remarkable.

 

[Joel Wright]

March 13, 1990 is a day that I'll never forget. A bunch of us neighbor kids were out roaming around the neighborhood trying to find the biggest hailstone we could find after the hail stopped when we noticed the wall cloud and funnel approaching from the southwest. None of us had seen anything like that before so we all scattered back into our houses. The funnel passed just to our west (was living in Silvis Illinois at the time), and ended up touching down a few miles to the north. It then went on to do F3 damage in Cordova, or about 15 miles north of the QC.

Man would I kill to see some radar images from this day!

 

[Rick Schmidt]

I saw the last 3 tornadoes from that storm, including the wedge ne of Hesston from 13 miles away! I left Topeka a little after 4:00, when the tornado had been on the ground for over 45 minutes, and the last tornado touched down around 6:15. I have still photos, but no video. I will also never forget that day.

 

[STurner]

Yeah that is amazing how several strong tornadoes and even a couple of violent tornadoes came out of temperatures being only in the mid to upper 60s and dewpoints in the mid to upper 50s. Like you guys said one of these violent F4 tornadoes tracked for like 131 miles. Correct me if Im wrong but didnt the Windsor, Colorado wedge EF3 come out of a pretty low temp/dew env as well as the Murfreesboro EF4 tornado. Temps and dews seemed pretty similar to the ones on 3-13-90.

 

[Chris Hayes]

March 13, 1990 is by far one of them days that I wish I could have chased. Shame I was only 10! lol. Looking at the Severeplot map of March 13 and April 26 it's amazing how similar the outbreaks are.