EF1 tornado, Wolbach, Nebraska, May 19, 2013

1. EF065 to 85 mph

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

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

May 19, 2013

Touchdown

4:51 PM CDT (21:51 UTC)

Lifted

4:53 PM CDT (21:53 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$40,000

County

Greeley County

Touchdown point

41.439, -98.365

Lift-off point

41.442, -98.363

Record number

1305191551-01

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 EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 90 mph.

• Based upon pictures received after the event.

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

This Sunday afternoon and evening was one of the more prolific severe weather events in the spring of 2013, in terms of the number of reports. This event was part of the same large-scale system that produced a few severe thunderstorms the previous day. A digging upper-level trough was over the western United States, while low pressure continued to organize over South Dakota, becoming vertically-stacked by evening. The associated cold front progressed through South Central Nebraska, helping to initiate the thunderstorms. Prior to thunderstorm development, a subtle short-wave trough moved through, introducing cooler and drier air aloft and increasing potential instability. The exit region of an 85 knot upper-level jet streak nosed into Oklahoma, coupling with the cold front to create deep, large-scale lift.||Surface temperatures peaked in the low to mid 70s, while dewpoints were in the 60s ahead of the front and in the 50s behind. MLCAPE was not overly impressive, with 1000-1500 J/kg ahead of the front and 500-1000 J/kg post-frontal. Deep layer shear was sufficient for supercells. With no cap in place, scattered thunderstorms began forming between 2 and 3 pm CDT, from Grand Island north and west. The storms increased in coverage as the afternoon progressed. While some remained discrete, the shear number of storms gradually led to several short multicell line segments. By 4 pm CDT, additional storms formed further south along the Highway 281 corridor. Before the storms exited into southeastern Nebraska, one large, solid squall line had formed, but numerous embedded, discrete cells were still discernible. ||With upper-level low pressure just north of the area and the associated cold temperatures aloft, the storms were largely hail producers. Quarter to golf ball size hail reports were numerous. The most severe storm of the event tracked east-northeast across Buffalo County and into Hall County. However, it dropped the largest hail and was the most intense over Buffalo County. Near Gibbon, baseball size hail occurred. This storm probably produced similar size hail along the more rural portions of its track, between Kearney and Gibbon, but the lack of population resulted in no other similar reports. The assistant fire chief in Gibbon reported that a law enforcement officer was dispatched to mile marker 279 on Interstate 80, or about 7 miles east of Kearney, where vehicles had broken windshields. Another storm produced a short-track, weak EF1 tornado near Wolbach in southern Greeley County. Most of the severe weather occurred within and around the Tri-Cities of Kearney, Grand Island and Hastings.

This tornado touched down a few miles northeast of Wolbach and was on the ground for approximately 2 minutes. With an estimated top wind speed of 90 mph, damage from this tornado included a destroyed mobile home and outbuilding and broken tree limbs of 5 to 8 inches in diameter.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 19:40 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.

Albion (BVN), 41 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), 125 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:51 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

26 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.