EF0 tornado, Juniata to Assumption, Nebraska, June 1, 2016

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

June 1, 2016

Touchdown

4:28 PM CDT (21:28 UTC)

Lifted

4:29 PM CDT (21:29 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$2,000

County

Adams County

Touchdown point

40.555, -98.555

Lift-off point

40.555, -98.555

Record number

1606011528-01

A narrow, broken line of strong to isolated severe thunderstorms flared up along a cold front over southern portions of South Central Nebraska on this Friday afternoon. Although these storms yielded very few severe weather reports, one of them consisted of a brief landspout tornado in central Adams County. This EF0-rated tornado, which touched down roughly 2.5 miles southwest of Juniata around 4:30 p.m. CDT, tracked only a very short distance but partially ripped the roof from a metal outbuilding along the way. About an hour later, a trained spotter northwest of Red Cloud reported a combination of nickel size hail and wind gusts to 75 MPH (as measured by a personal weather station). ||This fairly localized and short-duration severe weather event got underway during peak afternoon heating along a classic, slowly-southeastward-tracking front. Initial development took place between 4:00-4:30 p.m. CDT, consisting of a broken line of convection extending roughly along a line from Minden-Hastings-Giltner. As is often the case, the landspout tornado near Juniata materialized early in storm maturity, just as the initial updrafts were strengthening in the presence of enhanced low-level vorticity along the surface frontal zone. As this broken line headed southeast around 20 MPH, most of it remained sub-severe and even weakened. However, the southwestern flank intensified through western Webster County, producing the aforementioned severe wind gusts before exiting southward into Kansas between 6:00-6:30 p.m. CDT. A short time later, a secondary narrow line of storms popped up over the York County area but remained sub-severe. By 8 p.m. CDT, all of South Central Nebraska found itself storm-free for the remainder of the night. In the mid-upper levels, the main driving force for this event was a broad shortwave trough sinking southeast across the Dakotas into eastern Nebraska over the course of the afternoon and evening. This wave was embedded within strengthening northwesterly flow aloft, with the Central Plains residing on the downstream side of a pronounced western CONUS ridge. At the surface, the aforementioned cold front roughly bisected South Central Nebraska from southwest-to-northeast around the time of storm development, trailing well-southward from a weak low pressure center in eastern North Dakota. Near and ahead of this boundary, modestly-unstable conditions were noted over the local area as temperatures warmed into the mid-80s F and dewpoints averaged in the mid-50s to around 60 F, promoting mixed-layer CAPE up to around 1500 J/kg in the presence of deep-layer wind shear up to 35 knots.

This landspout tornado briefly touched down roughly 2.5 miles southwest of Juniata. Damage was confined to a roof being partially torn off of a metal outbuilding. Maximum wind speed was estimated to be between 75 and 80 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.

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 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.

Hastings (HSI), 12 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), 28 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:22 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2016 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

2 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.