F0 tornado, Minden, Nebraska, May 21, 1998

1. F040 to 72 mphthis tornado

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

F0

Date

May 21, 1998

Touchdown

8:35 PM CDT (01:35 UTC)

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Kearney County

Touchdown point

40.450, -99.020

Lift-off point

40.450, -99.020

Record number

1014

Two clusters of strong to severe thunderstorms erupted across south-central Nebraska in the evening and early morning hours. The first dumped hail as large as soft balls on Holdrege and the surrounding area. Dozens of cars and trucks were damaged or totaled by the large hail. A fertilizer operation southwest of town sustained major damage to a storage bin as the hail went through the steel roof. Roofs and siding was damaged along with windows broken and blown in. The first round of thunderstorms also spawned two brief tornado touchdowns to the west of Minden. Both were reported by trained spotters in the area. Large hail north of Arapahoe severely damaged the wheat crop in the area.The second round of storms rolled through around midnight CDT with torrential rains and wind driven hail. Damage was generally confined to crops and, in particular, across a part of northern Hamilton county. As many as fifty sections of beans, corn, and alfalfa were damaged by the wind and hail. Nine sections sustained major damage. Throughout the area, widespread one to four inch rains posed problems for low lying areas and waterlogged early season crops.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

5 minutes of warning. NWS GID issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:30 UTC, 5 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:00 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 10:39 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

Holdrege/Brewstr (HDE), 27 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The live radar over the trackEvery 1998 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

14 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.