When the tornado sirens sounded in Ottawa, Kansas, on the afternoon of April 13, residents had only minutes to reach shelter before an EF-2 tornado carved through the town. That twister was the most powerful confirmed event in a multi-day severe weather outbreak that hammered the central United States from the Plains to the upper Midwest, producing at least three tornadoes, baseball-sized hail, and flooding that left communities scrambling to assess the damage.
The National Weather Service logged more than 1,100 preliminary reports of large hail, damaging winds above 60 mph, and tornadoes between Monday and Wednesday of that week, according to the Associated Press. The reports spanned multiple states and covered all categories of severe weather, not just tornadoes. Many of those entries remain subject to revision as NWS field teams complete ground-truth surveys.
Ottawa takes a direct hit
The NWS Weather Forecast Office in Topeka conducted physical damage surveys and published a detailed event summary for the Ottawa tornado, documenting its EF-2 rating, estimated peak winds, path length, path width, and casualty figures. According to the same Topeka WFO summary, a second, weaker EF-0 tornado touched down near Quenemo the same day as part of the same storm complex.
Hail up to 2.75 inches pounded eastern Kansas during the outbreak’s opening hours, as recorded in the Storm Prediction Center’s preliminary Local Storm Reports for April 13, battering crops and vehicles across Franklin County. The Associated Press reported injuries in the county and structural damage in Ottawa, though the exact number of people hurt has not been confirmed through official NWS or county emergency management channels. NWS survey teams were still in the field at the time of those wire reports.
The same SPC preliminary reports show time-stamped and location-stamped entries for tornadoes, hail, and high winds collected by NWS offices across the region, confirming the multi-state reach of the outbreak on its first day alone.
Storms push into the upper Midwest
By April 14, the system had shifted northeast into Iowa and Wisconsin. The NWS office in La Crosse documented severe thunderstorms that spawned at least one tornado near Union Center, Wisconsin, along with hail reports reaching approximately 3.5 inches across parts of northeast Iowa and southwest Wisconsin.
Flooding accompanied the storms in both states, though detailed hydrological assessments for river levels or flash-flood damage had not been published by the La Crosse office at the time of this reporting. Whether any fatalities occurred anywhere in the broader storm system has not been confirmed in available primary documentation from NOAA or NWS offices.
What the numbers actually mean
The 1,100-plus figure deserves careful context. It represents the total count of preliminary severe weather reports filed across multiple states over three days, covering tornadoes, hail, and damaging wind events combined. It does not mean 1,100 tornadoes touched down. The Storm Prediction Center’s preliminary reports are working documents: some entries may be reclassified, merged, or removed as NWS offices finish their ground-truth surveys in the weeks ahead. Updated tallies and revised EF ratings should be expected.
The strongest evidence available comes directly from NWS Weather Forecast Offices, which conduct physical damage surveys, analyze radar data, and publish event summaries with embedded track maps and imagery. The Ottawa tornado documentation from the Topeka WFO and the April 14 storm summary from the La Crosse WFO are primary, field-verified records. Wire reporting from the AP fills in on-the-ground details that official NWS summaries, which focus on meteorological data, typically do not address in their initial publications. But those wire accounts are snapshots taken while the event was still unfolding, not final records.
What affected residents should do now
For anyone in Franklin County, Ottawa, or the Union Center area who sustained property damage, the practical stakes are immediate. Insurance claims, federal disaster declarations, and community rebuilding plans all depend on finalized NWS damage assessments and EF ratings, not preliminary wire tallies or social media estimates.
Residents should document all property losses now with photographs and written inventories, then monitor their local NWS office for updated event summaries. Those official reports carry the wind speed estimates, tornado path data, and damage classifications that insurers and emergency management agencies use to process claims and allocate resources.
As of late April 2026, the verified record shows a damaging, multi-state outbreak with at least three confirmed tornadoes, widespread large hail, and a recovery process still in its early stages. NWS offices across the affected region continue to finalize their assessments, and the numbers are likely to shift before the full picture comes into focus.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
