EF1 tornado, Ceresco to Boys Town, Nebraska, May 11, 2014

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 11, 2014

Touchdown

6:59 PM CDT (23:59 UTC)

Lifted

7:25 PM CDT (00:25 UTC)

On the ground

26 minutes

Path length

10.7 miles (17.2 km)

Path width

800 yards (732 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Saunders and Douglas counties

Touchdown point

41.163, -96.378

Lift-off point

41.258, -96.230

Record number

1405111759-01

35 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ABR and NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 94 mph.

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

One long-tracked supercell thunderstorm, and several other shorter-lived storms spawned tornadoes across eastern Nebraska during the late afternoon and evening hours of May 11th. The storms developed near the intersection of a warm front and dry-line/cold front in south central Nebraska then tracked northeast along the warm front toward the Lincoln and Omaha areas. Conditions in the area were very unstable with temperatures in the 80s to around 90 south of the warm front with dew point temperatures in the 60s. In total 12 tornadoes were recorded in the Omaha/Valley warning area with several others in the Hastings forecast area. The storms also produced very heavy rainfall which caused some flooding, mostly north through west and southwest of Lincoln.

This tornado had a track of a little under 2 miles.

This tornado initially touched down south of Yutan in Saunders county and crossed over into Douglas county. The total path length was about 10.7 miles, a little under 4 of it in Saunders county.

This tornado initially touched down in Saunders county and had a total track length of around 10.7 miles with around 7 miles of the track in Douglas county. This was the first of 2 tornadoes that hit near the Omaha area this evening.

This tornado was the second of two tornadoes that hit near the Omaha area this evening. The track of this tornado was around 5 miles.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

40 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:19 UTC, 40 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:21 UTC and running to 03:00 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:59 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.

Millard (MLE), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Omaha radar (KOAX), 13 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:58 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 2014 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

35 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.