Name: Remembering the November 2015 tornado outbreak
Uploaded: 2025-11-14T01:07:17.291Z
Duration: 1 min 51 s
Description: Meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach looks back on his chase of the historic high plains tornado outbreak of November 16, 2015.

Meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach looks back on his chase of the historic high plains tornado outbreak of November 16, 2015.

Tulsa

In November 2015, a record-breaking tornado outbreak occurred across the high plains, with 38 tornadoes touching down in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. This event was notable for being the largest single tornado outbreak so far west and so late in the year, according to meteorological records.

The outbreak included a series of powerful supercells, with one storm producing three tornadoes near Liberal, Kansas, including a mile-wide tornado that traveled 51 miles. Meteorologists described the late-season severity as unprecedented for the region.

Remembering the November 2015 tornado outbreak

Oh yeah, it's definitely down. Here we go. It was 10 years ago this weekend in 2015 when 38 tornadoes struck the high plains. It was the largest single tornado outbreak in recorded history that far west that late in the year. November 16th was a well-advertised event, and I had driven halfway from my home in Illinois to Tulsa the night before to position for the next day. And when I awakened that morning, forecasts and social media were buzzing with the Texas target, but I stayed with my initial northern target, positioning in the Oklahoma panhandle where I waited for three hours before my storm went up. And when it did, I had less than 90 minutes before nightfall. As the storm drifted northeast toward the Kansas border, it exploded from a little shower into this beastly supercell, pouring out hail as it moved toward the town of Liberal, Kansas, and covering the ground with half-dollar-sized ice. Fortunately, it cleared Liberal just in time as the storm put down the first of three tornadoes northeast of the city. Tornado on the ground, fog north of Liberal. It grew into a mile-wide monster as night fell, and it went on a 51-mile path. At one point, a brief satellite tornado came down next to the main tornado, and as that main tornado dissipated west of Ensign, a third tornado came down on the same storm a few miles to its west. I caught the initial moments of that third tornado before my chase was ended at this scene, a semi that was picked up and flipped across US-56 by that third tornado. I saw three of the nine tornadoes that touched down in Kansas that night, with 29 other tornadoes touching down across Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. While tornadoes are common to this region in the spring, an event like this this late in the fall, as one meteorologist from Dodge City put it, was unprecedented. For AccuWeather, I'm meteorologist Tony Laubach.

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