F0 tornado, Elwood, Nebraska, July 20, 2000

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

July 20, 2000

Touchdown

5:55 PM CDT (22:55 UTC)

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Gosper County

Touchdown point

40.480, -99.680

Lift-off point

40.480, -99.680

Record number

399

A cluster of severe thunderstorms rumbled southeast across a portion of south-central Nebraska producing large hail and a brief tornado. The tornado was spotted by a deputy sheriff in southeast Gosper county. Large hail across the area did cause considerable property and crop damage from south of Bertrand to the Kansas state line south of Orleans. Reports of softball size hail were recorded south of Loomis with hail nearly as large in Holdrege. Automobiles, houses, and agricultural buildings all sustained damage in southwest Phelps county.As the storm moved southeast, it severely damaged about 33,000 acres of crop and pasture land in western Harlan county. The sheriff reported drifts along Highway 89 south of Orleans stretched for 8 miles, or to about the Kansas state line. The nearly 4 inch rain which followed the hail fell on top of 5 inches of rain just a few days earlier. Losses due to land erosion were estimated at $70,000. Ironically, this storm passed through just 3 weeks after another vicious hailstorm pummeled crops in western Harlan county. Both storms effectively wiped out any prospect of producing any significant corn or soybean crop in the western half of the county.

Brief touchdown reported by sheriff

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

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 19:56 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), 106 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:57 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 2000 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

7 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.