EF0 tornado, Greeley, Nebraska, February 28, 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

February 28, 2012

Touchdown

7:00 PM CST (01:00 UTC)

Lifted

7:01 PM CST (01:01 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Greeley County

Touchdown point

41.550, -98.607

Lift-off point

41.550, -98.602

Record number

1202281900-01

1 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 75 mph.

• 70K damage. Brief touchdown witnessed by farmer.

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

Although severe weather reports were limited on this Tuesday afternoon and evening, the first severe thunderstorm event of 2012 featured the first-ever confirmed February tornado within the 24-county South Central Nebraska area. This brief EF0 tornado touched down four miles west of Greeley at 7 PM and overturned an irrigation pivot. A few hours prior to this, an EF0 tornado near Stapleton in west central Nebraska became the first-ever documented February tornado within the state of Nebraska. In addition to the tornado west of Greeley, a few other notable reports of wind damage in northern portions of South Central Nebraska included a feed grinder overturned near North Loup and an outbuilding destroyed southwest of Belgrade. ||Breaking down the event, an initial band of non-severe elevated thunderstorms lifted from north to south across much of South Central Nebraska between 10 AM and 1 PM. In the wake of this early activity, modest clearing and resultant destabilization worked into western portions of the area during the early afternoon, in association with an advancing mid level dry slot. As a result, isolated to scattered thunderstorms developed into portions of mainly Dawson, Gosper, Phelps, Furnas and Harlan Counties between 130 PM-330 PM. One of these storms became an organized low-topped supercell in Phelps and Buffalo Counties between 330 PM-430 PM, but resulted in only pea size hail reports in the Holdrege and Kearney areas. Later in the afternoon and early evening, mainly between 530 PM-830 PM, the coverage of strong to severe thunderstorms increased a bit for areas north of Interstate 80, and also east of Highway 281. The storm mode during this time was primarily comprised of fast-moving line segments with a few pockets of embedded rotation, such as that which produced the tornado near Greeley. By 830 PM, all thunderstorms had exited into eastern Nebraska. ||On the synoptic scale, this was a classic early-season severe weather setup for the area, featuring a strong, negatively tilted mid and upper level trough ejecting out of the Central Rockies into the Central Plains. At the surface, a well-defined surface low pressure system deepened to around 994 millibars as it tracked from east-central Colorado at mid-day, to central Nebraska by late afternoon. This allowed a well-defined surface triple point to develop into central Nebraska as a warm lifted north and a trailing cold front surged in from the west. Late afternoon mesoscale parameters revealed a highly-sheared but only modestly unstable environment with surface dewpoints only in the upper 40s to low 50s. Surface-based CAPE averaged under 1000 J/kg, but deep-layer vertical wind shear averaged least 50-60 knots, and low-level 0-1 kilometer shear featured impressive values of 35-50 knots. At the time of the tornado in Greeley County, effective storm relative helicity values were at least 600 m2/s2. ||In the wake of the departing storms and surface low pressure system, very strong westerly winds overspread South Central Nebraska, with gusts to around 50 MPH lasting well into the early morning hours of the 29th. The wintry side of this system narrowly missed northern portions of the area, as parts of north central Nebraska received several inches of snow.

A weak tornado, with peak winds estimated at 70 mph, briefly touched down west of Greeley. Damage was confined to an overturned pivot.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:55 UTC and running to 02:22 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 01:44 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.

Ord/Sharp Field (ODX), 30 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Grand Island radar (KUEX), 137 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:58 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

12 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.