EF1 tornado, Bostwick, Nebraska, April 24, 2016

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

April 24, 2016

Touchdown

6:03 PM CDT (23:03 UTC)

Lifted

6:10 PM CDT (23:10 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

2.4 miles (3.9 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$4,000

County

Nuckolls County

Touchdown point

40.095, -98.180

Lift-off point

40.078, -98.140

Record number

1604241703-01

10 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 91 mph.

• near starting point possibly
• up to baseball size hail indents in sand pile at 14 and 136 corner north of superior

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

Although severe storms affected only small portions of the southeast quadrant of the local area (namely Nuckolls County), this Sunday afternoon featured the first documented tornado of 2016 within South Central Nebraska, along with a smattering of hail reports up to golf ball size. The EF1-rated tornado was the story of the day locally, as it traced nearly a three mile, curved path from approximately eight miles to five miles northwest of Superior shortly after 6 p.m. CDT. Along the way, it damaged trees, fence line and power poles. It was also highly visible (some folks saw it from nearly 20 miles away) and was even captured live by a TV station webcam in Superior. Nearly an hour later, another tornado narrowly missed southern Thayer County, but remained slightly south of the state line in Republic County Kansas. As for hail, ground-truth reports were fairly limited, but a separate storm (not the same one that produced the tornado) dropped ping pong ball to golf ball stones from Superior to at least three miles east of Superior. Earlier on, the initial severe storm development of the afternoon yielded ping pong ball size hail south of Red Cloud. ||Within the local South Central Nebraska area, this event consisted of a fairly localized cluster of multicell and a few supercell storms, the majority of which affected Nuckolls, Webster Thayer and Fillmore counties between 5:00-7:30 p.m. CDT before exiting into southeast Nebraska. As mentioned, Nuckolls County bore the brunt of severe weather, with one severe storm lifting north out of Jewell County Kansas, and another (the tornado-producer) intensifying as it drifted east from Webster County. North of this primary zone of strong to severe convection, a few strong storms also flared up within the northeast quadrant of South Central Nebraska, including one that dropped small hail in eastern Nance County around 7:30 p.m. CDT. In the mid-upper levels, the primary instigator for severe weather was a strong, closed low tracking eastward along the Nebraska-South Dakota border and a negatively-tilted shortwave trough to its east-southeast kicking out across the Central Plains. At mid-afternoon, the primary surface low of around 996 millibars was centered in central South Dakota, while a secondary, slightly weaker low developed in west central Kansas. These two lows were connected by a rather classic, north-south oriented dryline/cold front combination. The South Central Nebraska severe storms erupted along the leading dryline, in an environment characterized by surface temperatures in the mid-70s F, dewpoints in the mid-upper 50s and south-southeast winds of 15-20 MPH with higher gusts. The mesoscale environment was certainly supportive of supercell storms, featuring up to 2000 J/kg mixed-layer CAPE and deep-layer wind shear of 40-50 knots. Although tornado parameters were not overly-high, a steady increase in low-level (0-1 kilometer) wind shear to around 20 knots was noted by late afternoon.

This tornado touched down approximately 8 miles northwest of Superior and took a curved path to the southwest before lifting approximately 5 miles northwest of Superior. This tornado remained in rural areas, damaging trees, fence line and 4 power poles along its path. The maximum wind speed was estimated to be 100 MPH.

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

0 minutes of warning. NWS GID issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:03 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 19:30 UTC and running to 01:19 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:45 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 Grand Island radar (KUEX), 35 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:05 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 2016 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

4 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.