EF0 tornado, Nelson to Angus, Nebraska, November 27, 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

November 27, 2016

Touchdown

5:00 PM CST (23:00 UTC)

Lifted

5:05 PM CST (23:05 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

4.2 miles (6.8 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$3,000

County

Nuckolls County

Touchdown point

40.270, -98.150

Lift-off point

40.310, -98.090

Record number

1611271700-01

9 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GID, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 75 mph.

• Power line dropped. Pole okay.
• Possible tree damage. Tornado lifting or lifted.
• minor damage to power pole
• stocks in fence. some scour of ground. 50 yards wide

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

Rare November tornadoes touched down in parts of Franklin, Webster, and Nuckolls Counties late on this Sunday afternoon. This was the second year in a row in which a tornado touched down in south central Nebraska during the month of November. This was only the fourth time since 2000 that a tornado occurred in the state of Nebraska during the month of November. Additionally, this event marked the second latest calendar day in which tornadoes touched down in Nebraska. The latest was December 13, 1975, when tornadoes occurred in Thayer and Pawnee Counties. ||Low stratus enveloped the region on this day, with patches of light rain moving southwest to northeast from Kansas. The largest area of rain moved across all of south central Nebraska between 11 am and 3 pm CST. The passage of its back edge brought an end to the steady rain. Behind this area of rain, scattered convective showers began developing within the dry slot, where the stratus was beginning to break-up, between the cloudy area to the northeast and the clear area to the southwest. From 3 to 5 pm CST, a few showers evolved into thunderstorms. The storms that eventually produced the tornadoes began as showers over north central Kansas, between Norton and Hayes. These cells intensified after 3:30 pm CST, and became low-top mini-supercells. The first tornado was over northeast Franklin County, just after 4 pm CST. The other two tornadoes occurred between 4:30 pm and 5:05 pm over east-central Webster and northwest Nuckolls Counties, and they were on the ground for several minutes, each with path lengths around 4 miles. The Webster County tornado produced EF-1 damage. The other two tornadoes were EF-0. Both of those tornadoes occurred in areas with very few objects to damage. Elsewhere, thunderstorms produced nickel size hail in a couple spots within Dawson and Howard Counties. One inch hail also occurred with the storm that produced the EF-1 tornado, just east of Red Cloud.||An occluded low pressure system emerged from the lee side of the Rockies through the day. The primary low crossed southeast Montana into North Dakota, while the triple point low matured over northeast Colorado and deepened from 996 mb at 6 am CST to 985 mb by 6 pm, as it crossed the western part of Nebraska on its way to near O'Neill. The stratiform rain occurred north of the warm front which began the day along the southern Nebraska border. This front lifted north along with the triple point low. The low-top convection formed along and ahead of the cold front, within the warm sector. In the upper-levels, a deep trough was over the western U.S., with two embedded well-defined shortwave troughs. The lead trough was over Utah and Arizona at 6 am CST. It exhibited negative tilt and was associated with the severe weather. By 6 pm CST, this trough had nearly formed a closed mid-level low along the Nebraska-South Dakota border. At that time, this low was in the left exit region of a 150 kt jet streak at 300 mb. Even with the extensive cloud cover, warm air advection had propelled surface temperatures into the middle and upper 50s, with dewpoints in the middle 50s. Mid-level lapse rates increased as the dry slot moved in, with values as high as 7.5 deg C/km. This resulted in sufficient instability, with MUCAPE at least 500 J/kg, but not as high as 1000 J/kg. Very strong and veering low-level winds resulted in 0-1 km SRH between 400 and 500 m2/s2. SRH of that strength was able to overcome the weak instability to result in a Supercell Composite Index in excess of 4, and a 0-1 Energy-Helicity Index in excess of 1.

This tornado caused very minor damage along its short path through rural areas. The maximum wind speed was estimated to be 75 MPH.

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

26 minutes of warning. NWS GID issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:34 UTC, 26 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:00 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:52 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 Grand Island radar (KUEX), 28 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:00 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

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.