F0 tornado, St Paul, Nebraska, April 21, 1999

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

April 21, 1999

Touchdown

12:15 PM CDT (17:15 UTC)

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$20,000

County

Howard County

Touchdown point

41.180, -98.470

Lift-off point

41.180, -98.470

Record number

874

Thunderstorms developed west of Holdrege in the morning and spread quickly northeast to St. Paul and Greeley by noon. Early on, the thunderstorms dumped hail and torrential rainfall northeast of Holdrege. 2.75" diameter hail was reported north of Holdrege and some areas in northwest Phelps county noted three foot hail drifts. Rain and hail teamed to produce areas of erosion across freshly tilled fields. As the storms spread northeast, a brief tornado damaged a home under construction north of Dannebrog. The tornado nearly destroyed the entire main floor. Only one wall was left standing. The owner and construction crew at the house at the time escaped injury by going to the basement just before the tornado struck. Minor roof damage occurred on a nearby house. Another brief tornado touch down occurred just south of St. Paul, causing some minor damage to outbuildings.

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

19 minutes of warning. NWS GID issued a tornado warning for this county at 16:56 UTC, 19 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 17:45 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 16:09 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.

The Grand Island radar (KUEX), 96 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:16 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

The live radar over the trackEvery 1999 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.