Tornadoes · United States · Nebraska · 2010
EF1 tornado, Cedar Creek, Nebraska, June 1, 2010
This EF1 tornado ran 0.6 miles across Cass County on June 1, 2010, touching down at 6:05 PM CDT and reaching 200 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $4,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
EF2111 to 135 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.
EF3136 to 165 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
EF5over 200 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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF1
- Date
- June 1, 2010
- Touchdown
- 6:05 PM CDT (23:05 UTC)
- Lifted
- 6:06 PM CDT (23:06 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.6 miles (0.9 km)
- Path width
- 200 yards (183 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $4,000
- County
- Cass County
- Touchdown point
- 41.004, -96.064
- Lift-off point
- 41.002, -96.054
- Record number
- 1006011705-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Supercell thunderstorms developed from west of Columbus toward and east of Norfolk as a warm front pressed north toward that region as a cold front was dropping south through northern Nebraska. South of the warm front temperatures climbed to around 90 degrees with dewpoint temperatures around 70. Meanwhile north of the cold front temperatures were in the 60s and 70s. As the two boundaries merged in the late afternoon the storms merged into a line which pushed southeast across the Omaha and Lincoln areas. The northern end of the storms caused wind damage across the northern sections of Omaha and was the beginning of a derecho which caused wind damage to parts of 3 other states as it swept eastward. The storms also produced numerous reports of large hail and at least 2 weak tornadoes.
A brief tornado touchdown caused damage to a pole barn before lifting near Highway 66.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
6 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:59 UTC, 6 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 UTC.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:54 UTC and running to 02:32 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13:46 UTC | 18:54 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Watch | OAX |
| 18:54 UTC | 02:32 UTC | Tornado Watch | OAX |
| 22:59 UTC | 23:30 UTC | Tornado Warning | OAX |
| 00:03 UTC | 00:45 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Moderate Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:49 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 air that afternoon
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.
Omaha, NE (KOAX), 12:00Z
11.1 hours before the tornado, 44 km from the path. June 1, 2010.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1529 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -110 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 815 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 39 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 14 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 80 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 36 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 2.1
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.3 K/km
Omaha, NE (KOAX), 00:00Z
0.9 hours after it, 44 km from the path. June 2, 2010.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 173 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -308 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 134 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1061 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 49 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 10 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -108 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 27 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.7
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.3 K/km
The radar
The Omaha radar (KOAX), 44 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:07 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22:18 UTC | HAIL 0.88 | 1 S Blair | Washington, NE | |
| 22:19 UTC | HAIL 0.88 | Blair | Washington, NE | |
| 22:20 UTC | HAIL 1.5 | 3 Wsw Bennington | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:20 UTC | HAIL 1.75 | Blair | Washington, NE | |
| 22:25 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:25 UTC | HAIL 1.5 | Gretna | Sarpy, NE | |
| 22:30 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | Omaha | Douglas, NE | SEVERAL TREES DOWN COVERING 72ND STREET NORTH OF HIGHWAY 36. TIME ESTIMATED BASED ON RADAR |
| 22:30 UTC | TSTM WND GST 62 | Blair | Washington, NE | |
| 22:30 UTC | TSTM WND GST 71 | Blair | Washington, NE | |
| 22:38 UTC | TSTM WND GST 60 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:44 UTC | TSTM WND GST 60 | Elkhorn | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:45 UTC | TSTM WND GST 50 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:45 UTC | TSTM WND GST 60 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:49 UTC | HAIL 1 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:50 UTC | HAIL 0.88 | 5 Se Gretna | Sarpy, NE | |
| 22:52 UTC | HAIL 1.5 | Gretna | Sarpy, NE | |
| 22:54 UTC | HAIL 1 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:55 UTC | HAIL 1 | Gretna | Sarpy, NE | |
| 22:55 UTC | HAIL 1 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 22:59 UTC | TSTM WND GST 60 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 23:02 UTC | HAIL 1 | Papillion | Sarpy, NE | |
| 23:02 UTC | TORNADO | 8 Wnw Plattsmouth | Cass, NE | |
| 23:03 UTC | TSTM WND GST 70 | 1 E Bennington | Douglas, NE | TREES DOWN |
| 23:04 UTC | TSTM WND GST 54 | Offutt Afb | Sarpy, NE | |
| 23:10 UTC | HAIL 0.88 | Omaha | Douglas, NE | |
| 23:35 UTC | HEAVY RAIN 2.84 | Papillion | Sarpy, NE | |
| 23:40 UTC | HAIL 1 | Lincoln | Lancaster, NE | EAST SIDE |
| 23:41 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | Omaha | Douglas, NE | TREES DOWN ON HWY |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2010 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 1, 2010
4 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.