EF0 tornado, Elwood, Nebraska, June 11, 2010

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. 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.

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

EF0

Date

June 11, 2010

Touchdown

10:03 PM CDT (03:03 UTC)

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Gosper County

Touchdown point

40.484, -99.850

Lift-off point

40.484, -99.850

Record number

1006112103-01

Multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms, mainly producing damaging winds and torrential rainfall, made for a very active Friday evening and early Saturday morning across much of South Central Nebraska. The initial wave of severe storms developed during the mid to late evening hours, mainly west of Highway 183 in the vicinity of a quasi-stationary surface front draped from Northwest Kansas to East Central Nebraska. With surface dewpoints pushing the low 70s in many areas, the airmass was quite unstable as storms organized, with MLCAPE values into the 3000-4000 J/kg range. A few of these initial storms were supercells, with one producing a brief EF0 tornado shortly after nightfall in central Gosper County with no damage reported. ||As the initial cluster of storms pushed east toward the Highway 281 corridor toward midnight, wind damage became increasingly common. Southern Adams County was one of the hardest hit areas, with grain bins blown onto railroad tracks in Ayr, and signficant tree damage and some structural damage just north of Ayr at Crystal Lake. As this intial wave of storms weakened somewhat, another severe squall line surged into western sections of South Central Nebraska after midnight, aided by strong convergence along the nose of a 40-50 knot low level jet. With this line of late-night storms, damaging winds were not only reported along the leading edge of the outflow, but also in association with a wake low pressure system that developed behind the main squall line. These winds associated with the wake low pounded western Dawson County for several minutes, with reports of uprooted trees and damage to signs and a gazebo in Cozad. As the leading edge of the bowing squall line reached the Highway 281 corridor after 2 am, Adams County was again struck with damaging winds clocked as high as 73 MPH at the Hastings airport. Winds gusts in excess of 60 MPH also pressed east through the Aurora and York areas. ||In addition to fairly widespread wind damage, portions of South Central Nebraska received heavy rainfall of 2 to 4 inches during the night. With the ground already saturated in areas mainly north of Interstate 80, flooding resulted. One of the most noteworthy flash flooding events affected the community of North Loup in Valley County along the Mira Creek. A dam break on the Bredthauer Dam, located approximately five miles northwest of town, allowed 1 to 2 feet of water to inundate much of North Loup on Saturday afternoon, with evacuations necessary.

Spotter reported a brief tornado touchdown south of Elwood.

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

6 minutes of warning. NWS GID issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:57 UTC, 6 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 03:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:34 UTC and running to 06:00 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, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:39 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.

The Grand Island radar (KUEX), 121 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:03 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2010 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

9 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.