EF0 tornado, Litchfield, Nebraska, April 15, 2012

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

April 15, 2012

Touchdown

11:48 AM CDT (16:48 UTC)

Lifted

11:50 AM CDT (16:50 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$60,000

County

Sherman County

Touchdown point

41.172, -99.192

Lift-off point

41.177, -99.186

Record number

1204151048-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GID, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• Damage to a metal building on a farmstead. Driver on Highway 2 witnessed the tornado crossing the road.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

As a powerful, nearly vertically-stacked closed low pressure passed directly over the area on this Sunday, a few brief EF0 tornadoes touched down in Sherman and Valley Counties at mid-day, while later in the afternoon and evening strong northwest gradient wind gusts of 50-60 MPH buffeted much of the 24-county area. ||Although tornadic activity was originally not anticipated on this day, it ended up being a fairly classic cold-core mid level low pressure system event. Factoring into this development was very strong low level vorticity associated with a 988 millibar surface low in central Nebraska, which teamed with meager-but-sufficient surface based CAPE of around 200 J/kg to spawn a small supercell storm that tracked from southwest Sherman County across southern and eastern Valley County, before departing the local area to the northeast. The first EF0 tornado struck a farmstead between Litchfield and the Custer County line just before 12 PM CDT, destroying a metal outbuilding and doing minor damage to a home. Less than an hour later, another brief tornado set down southeast of Ord, with no damage reported. Once this lone tornadic storm moved out of the area, cooler and more stable air quickly rushed in behind the departing surface low, ending the severe weather threat. ||As the afternoon and evening wore on, northwest winds ramped up on the backside of the low as it tracked into northwest Iowa by sunset. Several automated sensors recorded sustained winds of 30-40 MPH and gusts to at least 50 MPH. Between 8 PM and 1230 AM CDT, 58-59 MPH gusts were recorded at the Grand Island, Ord and Aurora airports.

This tornado affected a one-half mile path approximately 2 miles northwest of Litchfield, and crossed Highway 2. Damage from this tornado was primarily confined to a metal building at a farmstead near Highway 2. The maximum wind speed was estimated at 80 mph.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 16:28 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), 114 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 16:47 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 2012 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

11 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.