EF0 tornado, Huntley, Nebraska, June 19, 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 19, 2018

Touchdown

5:42 PM CDT (22:42 UTC)

Lifted

5:43 PM CDT (22:43 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

35 yards (32 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Harlan County

Touchdown point

40.172, -99.262

Lift-off point

40.174, -99.258

Record number

1806191642-01

This was an active Tuesday afternoon and evening of thunderstorms across much of South Central Nebraska, although all verified severe weather concentrated within counties south of Interstate 80. There were several reports of large hail (up to baseball size), damaging winds (up to around 70 MPH), a few pockets of very heavy rainfall into mainly the 3-5 range, and one brief EF-0 tornado. This tornado, which exhibited multi-vortex structure along its short path, was caught on video by a storm chaser near Huntley in eastern Harlan County around 5:45 p.m. CDT. Shortly before dropping the tornado, this high-precipitation (HP) supercell storm also yielded tennis ball to baseball size hail several miles north of Orleans. Other notable hail reports on this day included 2 diameter stones near Franklin and ping pong ball size near Blue Hill. As for damaging winds, the highest measured gusts (unofficial sources) featured 71 MPH near Carleton and 63 MPH near Holbrook. At least minor tree/branch damage was reported in or near Cambridge and Naponee, and power lines were blown down near Republican City. Rainfall-wise, the majority of the 24-county area received at least 1 of mostly-welcomed rainfall. However, there were generally four distinct zones that got drenched with noticeably higher amounts of at least 3-4, and locally more. These included portions of the following counties: much of southern/eastern Thayer; much of northern Furnas and adjacent portions of Gosper/Phelps/Harlan; parts of northern Nuckolls/southern Clay; and parts of northeastern York. A few of the highest official 24-hour totals (NWS coop and CoCoRaHS observers) featured: 5.14 northeast of Chester, 4.52 near Deweese, 3.86 in Edison and 3.80 in Hubbell. There was also an unofficial report of a whopping 7 south of Gilead in far southeast Thayer County. Although there were surely several instances of fairly minor flooding and even brief flash flooding, ground truth reports were rather limited. ||Breaking down event evolution/timing, the first strong to severe storms of the afternoon fired up between 3:30-5:00 p.m. CDT on opposite ends of the local area, with one cluster in Thayer County and the other centered over Furnas County. During the next couple hours, intense multicell convection gradually connected the gap between the original two clusters, eventually resulting in one semi-organized band. However, during this same time, the most intense storm of the day took center stage as an embedded HP supercell tracked across much of Harlan and southern Franklin counties, producing very large hail and the aforementioned brief tornado. Between 7 p.m. CDT and nightfall, convection expanded in areal coverage to encompass most all of South Central Nebraska, while the overall severe weather threat diminished. However, around 9 p.m. CDT another cluster of vigorous convection rolled in from the west, yielding a few reports of marginally-severe winds in Furnas County. These were the last severe reports of the evening, with only a large shield of mainly light to moderate rain persisting well past midnight, while gradually ending from west-to-east. ||Closing with some meteorological background, this was a well-anticipated round of severe storms and heavy rainfall, as low-amplitude shortwave energy tracked into Nebraska around the southeast periphery of a larger-scale trough/closed low centered over the Northern Rockies. At the surface, a fairly well-defined and generally west-east oriented quasi-stationary front stretched near the Nebraska-Kansas-border, with the majority of South Central Nebraska residing just north of this boundary in an environment characterized by east-northeast breezes, afternoon temperatures in the 80s F and dewpoints in the upper 60s-low 70s F. During the height of severe storm development, the mesoscale environment featured between 30-50 knots of deep-layer wind shear and mixed-layer CAPE of 2000-3000 J/kg.

A multiple vortex tornado occurred along a short path. Maximum wind was estimated to be 70 MPH, and no significant damage was reported. The path and tornado characteristics were estimated according to a storm chaser video, reports, and radar information.

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

13 minutes of warning. NWS GID issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:29 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:00 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 20:39 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:59 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), 71 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:44 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

7 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.