EF2 tornado, Clinton, Nebraska, July 26, 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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

July 26, 2016

Touchdown

7:00 PM MDT (01:00 UTC)

Lifted

7:03 PM MDT (01:03 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.6 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$25,000

County

Sheridan County

Touchdown point

42.815, -102.305

Lift-off point

42.806, -102.301

Record number

1607261900-01

12 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LBF, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 99 mph.

• Numerous large tree limbs down.
• Center irrigation pivot. damaged with four towers flipped over.
• A 40X70 Cleary pole barn building. The wind hit on the north wall that was caved in the upper half of wall with roof peeled south on east side. The northeast corner post failed with debris to the southeast and across Highway 27. .
• North wall caved in 4 6x6 poles snapped at base of north end of building.

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

Supercells crossed into northwest Nebraska the evening of July 26 and produced severe wind gusts and large hail in Sheridan and Cherry counties and two tornadoes in northeast Sheridan County near Gordon. The storms grew upscale into a MCS and eventually a bow echo. Multiple severe wind gusts were reported farther south into the Sandhills.

At 1903MDT the tornado touched down in an open field and moved south. It produced damage to three rows of tree wind breaks, destroyed 75 yards of fencing, and removed shingles from a double wide mobile home. Several tree trunks were snapped with the limb debris carried southeast. Law enforcement observed the tornado. The tornado was rated an EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale with a peak wind of 107 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.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 23:14 UTC and running to 04:00 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:52 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 Rapid City radar (KUDX), 152 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:00 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

3 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.