EF0 tornado, Elk Creek, Nebraska, June 11, 2018

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 11, 2018

Touchdown

8:00 PM CDT (01:00 UTC)

Lifted

8:02 PM CDT (01:02 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.1 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Johnson County

Touchdown point

40.327, -96.096

Lift-off point

40.327, -96.095

Record number

1806111900-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 74 mph.

• 40.222996, -96.172481 actual lat
• Brief touchdown in middle of field.

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

A weak upper-level disturbance tracked from the central High Plains through the mid Missouri Valley, encouraging the development of a surface low from southeast South Dakota into eastern Nebraska. Meanwhile, an associated cold front progressed east into eastern Nebraska by afternoon with a stationary boundary extending from the surface low through southwest Iowa into northern Missouri. Severe thunderstorms developed during the late afternoon over eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa along these surface features with activity merging into a bow-echo complex that subsequently tracked into northwest Missouri by late evening. Brief tornadoes occurred with a supercell over Cass County, NE with intense, straight-line winds affecting the I-29 corridor in Fremont County, IA.

A short lived tornado that produced minor tree branch damage and was over a field for part of its path. It traveled for less than a tenth of a mile moving west to east and was located 3 3/4 north northeast of Elk Creek.

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

14 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:46 UTC, 14 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:49 UTC and running to 02:31 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:45 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.

Nebraska City (AFK), 37 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Omaha radar (KOAX), 113 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:57 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 2018 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.