The April 29, 2022 EF-3 Tornado: Lessons from a Near Miss

On the evening of Friday, April 29, 2022, a low precipitation supercell produced a destructive EF-3 tornado that tore a 12.75 mile path through portions of Sedgwick and Butler counties in south central Kansas, a near miss for the 625,000 Wichita Metro population center. This tornado event was challenging from a meteorological perspective and was a success story by narrow margins. Remarkably, the event concluded with only three direct injuries and zero deaths despite only eight minutes of lead time for the city of Andover, and the tornado being at or near its peak when it hit a YMCA. There were many lessons learned from the event both internally and externally.

Post event interviews revealed findings and lessons on community preparedness, messaging and disaster recovery efforts in a transitional period out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ending of the story could have been dramatically different with very small adjustments to the event details such as the time of day and track of the tornado. These lessons and the actions that are being taken to resolve them will be presented.