By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

Kansas this year beat its all-time tornado record in a day -- a day that brought with it 55 tornadoes.

As a result, 2008 likely will end with 185 tornadoes in the record books, "which is a huge, huge smashing of the record here," said Dave Floyd, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Goodland.

Actually, that is 125 tornadoes above average, Floyd said, and 48 more than the 137 recorded in 2007, itself a record. There were 127 tornadoes reported in May alone.

"Dodge City, on their own did most of the smashing," Floyd said of the area covered by the Dodge City weather bureau.

For the year, there were 81 tornadoes reported, according to Larry Ruthi, meteorologist in charge of the Dodge City NWS.

"Pretty much unprecedented for us," he said.

Such an understatement.

Those 81 tornadoes were sharply higher than last year's record of 53, not to mention the long-term average of 14.

But it was May, and specifically May 23, that upset the apple cart.

Dodge City recorded 73 tornadoes in May -- 55 of them on one day, May 23, a day that will live in infamy.

It's a day Bill Scott and his family will never forget.

That's the day at least one of those tornadoes formed southeast of Ransom and took aim on the countryside where he lives. That tornado was a half-mile wide and remained on the ground for 6.4 miles. It was an EF3, with wind speeds of somewhere between 136 to 165 mph.

Within moments, Scott's house and farmyard incurred significant damage. Two other area homes, one owned by Scott's son, Craig, and a neighbor, Robert Curtis, were destroyed. No one was injured.

"We hadn't been in the basement but a couple minutes and things started happening," Scott said of how he, his wife, Mary, and son, Kent, took shelter. They had been receiving warnings from a weather radio, but everything went black when the power went out.

"We knew it was time to get somewhere," Scott said of seeking shelter.

Moments after they hunkered down, part of the Scott barn hit the side of the house -- right near the entryway to the storm shelter.

"When it hit the corner of the house, there was a huge explosion," with glass breaking, Scott said. "But it didn't last long. Probably 30 seconds, the wind howled and then it quieted down."

Outside, the farmstead was in ruins. Trailers were overturned, grain bins toppled and fences gone.

"It actually happened so fast, you really didn't have time to get scared," Scott said.

Although Scott said he continues to find stark reminders of the tornadoes almost daily, the costs have been staggering.

For him, damage was close to $150,000, with another $25,000 on equipment.

Son Craig is still working through the process of settling with his insurance company, but they have since had to abandon the farmstead and move into a house in Ransom. Scott's neighbor, Robert Curtis, lost his house.

While many people didn't even realize there was damage in the Ransom area, they were quite a few of the places in Kansas with damage this year.

Damage for the entire state amounted to about $110 million, the vast majority of that -- $86 million -- in Manhattan and Chapman.

Gove County, however, had in excess of $4 million in damages,

Floyd, at the Goodland NWS, said tornado damage in its forecast area likely topped $8 million, "which is high for us because we've got a lot of open spaces."

That's true, but Floyd is aghast at just how close northwest Kansas came to absolute devastation.

"We just missed Quinter three times this year," he said.

One of those, an EF4 tornado came perilously close to Quinter, tracking less than 3 miles to the west. That tornado had a path 11.4 miles long and was three-fourths of a mile wide -- big enough to blanket Gove County's largest community.

Its first since 1990, that EF4 had winds estimated at anywhere from 155 to 200 mph, perhaps even higher. The house that it hit was older, and under the new standard of measurement, fell into the EF4 category, at the high end.

"The house that it hit was pretty much gone," Floyd said. It also tossed two vehicles more than 150 yards, injuring one person critically.

"Trees were totally stripped off bare," he said. "The house, there was absolutely nothing left standing."

Quinter wasn't the only community that came close to destruction, and Floyd is taking note of that.

The city of Ellis nearly got hit, with one small tornado dissipating at the very edge of the community, which cut power and turned the city black. A second, slightly larger, tornado passed less than a mile to the west.

Another, larger tornado pulled up short about 8 miles southwest, next to a small tornado that passed over Riga, where an elevator is located.

Still another tornado swept up from its genesis alongside Kansas Highway 147 and barreled north, taking out power lines before it abruptly headed west over Cedar Bluff Reservoir dam, just hundreds of yards away from a park full of campers out for the holiday weekend.

If that wasn't enough, Floyd said, tornadoes also passed uncomfortably close to the likes of Hoxie and Oberlin. Floyd, in fact, hopes to map out the tornadoes and just how close they came to colliding head-on with communities.

The Dodge City forecast office didn't report any EF4 tornadoes, but it did record four EF3 twisters, including the one in Ness County.

The storm system that dropped the May tornadoes was little more than a low-pressure system that set up shop over Colorado and languished there, allowing moisture to build from the Gulf of Mexico. It was the same type of system that built up in late 2006, where nearly 40 inches of snow fell on parts of extreme western Kansas.

"We saw this coming a few days out," Floyd said of the tornado outbreak.