The Greensburg Tornado of May 4, 2007 was the first to be given an EF5 rating under the new Enhanced Fujita Scale. That scale went operational in February of 2007. The focus of this summary will be on this monstrous tornado that wiped out 95% of Greensburg, KS. But first, I want to do an overview.
The supercell that generated the EF5 also produced more than 20 other tornadoes across parts of SW KS during an 8-hour period. There were several satellite tornadoes spawned around the larger Greensburg twister. But there were also 3 other extremely large, significant tornadoes that plowed through this area during the late hours of May 4.
I discovered a powerpoint presentation entitled, “The Historic Greensburg Supercell of 4 May 2007”, created by Mike Umscheid of the NWS DDC and Leslie R. Lemon of the NOAA/NWS Warning Decision Training Branch. It was presented at the March 5-6, 2010 DuPage County, IL Advanced Severe Weather Seminar.
In it, Umcheid and Lemon describe “The Big 4”. These are the 4 large tornadoes generated by the Greenburg Supercell. The graphic below from the powerpoint shows the tracks of those tornadoes along with their rating, duration, length, mean width, max width and damage area.