EF0 tornado, Stanton, Nebraska, October 4, 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

October 4, 2013

Touchdown

4:32 PM CDT (21:32 UTC)

Lifted

4:42 PM CDT (21:42 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

4.7 miles (7.6 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Stanton County

Touchdown point

41.868, -97.335

Lift-off point

41.929, -97.293

Record number

1310041532-01

6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.

• Minor crop damage. Brief touchdown.
• Corn damaged. nitial touchdown.
• corn damaged. Rope out point.

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

The same powerful storm system that produced severe weather across eastern Nebraska on October 3rd remain in the area on the 4th. A strong area of low pressure moved from eastern Colorado into southern South Dakota during the day. As this occurred, a dry line was sweeping across central and into eastern Nebraska. A warm front continued to lift north into northeast Nebraska and western Iowa by late afternoon. With unseasonably warm and moist air in the region the atmosphere became strongly unstable. This instability coupled with a strong wind field associated with the powerful storm system and created and environment favorable for significant severe weather. Supercells developed near the intersection of the dry line and warm front over northeast Nebraska during the afternoon and tracked northeast. The supercells were responsible for large hail, damaging winds, and significant tornadoes. Other isolated thunderstorms developed south along the dry line into western Iowa producing very large hail and damaging winds during the evening of the 4th.

This tornado, captured by storm chasers, moved through rural Stanton County with no reported damage.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:38 UTC and running to 23:57 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 20:01 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 Omaha radar (KOAX), 102 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:30 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

16 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.