The 24 May 2016 Dodge City, KS, Supercell: Just How Many Tornadoes Were There?

On 24 May 2016 a cyclic supercell became a prolific tornado producer, spawning around a dozen tornadoes west and southwest of Dodge City, KS. Over a nearly 40-minute period, a rapid-scan, X-band, polarimetric, Doppler radar (RaXPol) collected high-resolution data on the supercell and the many tornadoes that were produced as it traversed the Kansas countryside. In the wake of the storm, the exact number of tornadoes that were produced was heavily debated, with numbers ranging from 10-20 total tornadoes. In particular, many observers speculated that several of the tornadoes were actually subvortices of one larger, multiple-vortex tornado. This study aims to use data collected by RaXPol and the Dodge City WSR-88D (KDDC) to attempt to assess exactly how many tornadoes actually occurred near Dodge City on this day. A combination of single-Doppler data, dual-Doppler data, photographs taken by the RaXPol team, and National Weather Service damage survey data will be used to estimate the location, relative duration, and general intensity of each tornado along the path of the tornadic supercell.