EF0 tornado, Shelton, Nebraska, March 19, 2013

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

March 19, 2013

Touchdown

5:00 PM CDT (22:00 UTC)

Lifted

5:03 PM CDT (22:03 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Buffalo County

Touchdown point

40.737, -98.730

Lift-off point

40.734, -98.719

Record number

1303191600-01

This Tuesday afternoon yielded the first tornado of 2013 in the state of Nebraska, in the form of a weak, brief EF0 landspout photographed by several people as it tracked through extreme southeast Buffalo County between Shelton and Interstate 80. The landspout was associated with a narrow line of rain and snow showers containing only a few embedded lightning strikes as it pushed southeastward across the area. This event occurred in an unusually cool and dry environment featuring surface temperatures only in the mid-40s and dewpoints in the low-30s. Despite these negative factors, low and mid-level lapse rates were very steep across the area, with 0-3 kilometer values on the order of 9-10 Celsius/kilometer. These steep lapse rates yielded modest surface-based CAPE on the order of 100-250 J/kg, likely just enough to promote weak tornado development. On the synoptic scale aloft, South Central Nebraska was under fairly strong west-northwest flow in the mid-upper levels featuring subtle shortwave troughs, between a deep longwave trough centered over the northern Great Lakes and a ridge building over the western Unites States.

A brief landspout tornado was reported just south of Shelton and just north of Interstate 80. No damage was reported, and top winds were estimated to be between 50 and 60 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 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), 52 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:57 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 2013 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

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.