F3 tornado, Emmet, Nebraska, June 9, 2003

1. F040 to 72 mph

   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 mphthis tornado

   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

F3

Date

June 9, 2003

Touchdown

7:30 PM CDT (00:30 UTC)

Path length

23.0 miles (37.0 km)

Path width

880 yards (805 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5.7 million

County

Holt County

Touchdown point

42.530, -98.800

Lift-off point

42.430, -98.420

Record number

1176

As the tornado initially touched down, it encountered a farmstead and destroyed three barns, a detached garage, and 3 large metal grain binds, and also ripped off a portion of the house roof, broke windows, and uprooted and snapped off 90% of the trees around the farmstead. As the tornado moved southeast, it hit two more farmsteads where it completely overturned a modular home, destroyed barns, snapped off nearly all trees. Further along the path to the southeast, the tornado threw farm machinery one quarter mile into a grove of trees. Then it hit another farm where it ripped off an attached garage on a house, broke most windows in the house, moved an old home off its foundation 2 feet, and killed one cow and extensively injured 14 other cows. A barn was also destroyed at a dairy farm across the road to the southeast. The tornado then moved southeast mainly across farmland destroying fields of corn and soybeans, overturning 200 hundred center pivot irrigation systems, snapping off 1,000 power poles, and breaking off numerous large trees. As the tornado passed 3 miles north of O'Neill, it destroyed storage sheds at numerous homesteads. Baseball size hail associated with the storm punctured holes in vinyl siding and broke windows and skylights in homes. Finally just before dissipating 2 miles north of Page, the tornado lifted the front porch on a home which then took off the roof and one exterior wall of the home.

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

52 minutes of warning. NWS LBF issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:38 UTC, 52 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:30 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:06 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.

O Neill (ONL), 7 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The North Platte radar (KLNX), 172 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:31 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 2003 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

20 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.