EF0 tornado, Sacramento, Nebraska, June 30, 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 30, 2018

Touchdown

3:40 PM CDT (20:40 UTC)

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Phelps County

Touchdown point

40.362, -99.311

Lift-off point

40.362, -99.311

Record number

1806301440-01

3 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 65 mph.

• Estimated end point from video.
• Confirmed reports of brief touchdown in the area. Time from radar.
• Video evidence and confirmed location on storm survey.

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

Especially for counties south of Interstate 80 in South Central Nebraska, June finished with an active Saturday afternoon and evening of severe storms. Things started off with two discrete supercells featuring intense, crop-damaging hail and a few brief tornadoes, followed a few hours later by a larger-scale squall line/linear mesoscale convective system (MCS) that yielded sporadic damaging winds and torrential rainfall. The two confirmed EF-0 tornadoes were spawned by the eastern supercell in southeastern Phelps County around 4 p.m. CDT and inflicted no evident damage. As for large hail, both supercells produced at least golf ball size stones, including reports from the Arapahoe, Loomis and Axtell and Minden areas. However, the western storm also featured a report of baseball size hail three miles southeast of Loomis (see below for more details regarding resultant crop damage). Turning to damaging winds, the aforementioned pair of supercells yielded a handful of measured and estimated reports, including 80 MPH near Axtell (measured by a storm spotter). A bit later and farther east, an evolving cluster of multicell storms with estimated 80 MPH winds brought isolated wind damage to a few rural residences in far eastern Clay County, including: destroyed carports and hog sheds, and a partially-removed garage roof. Later in the evening, the more expansive MCS that swept across all of South Central Nebraska from west-to-east yielded mostly sub-severe gusts of 45-55 MPH. However, a handful of severe-criteria gusts of at least 60-65 MPH occurred in both far western areas (near Cambridge) and also far eastern areas (Fillmore/Thayer counties). In the eastern area, a camper blew over near Hebron and a large tree fell on a home in Milligan. ||When all was said and done, the overall-biggest severe weather impact from the day was likely the localized-but-extensive crop damage caused by the initial pair of supercells in the southwestern quadrant of South Central Nebraska. The western supercell, which tracked from north central Furnas County to central Phelps County mainly between 2:30-4:30 p.m. CDT was particularly impactful, as satellite imagery in the following days revealed a roughly 2-3 mile wide by 15+ mile long swath of near-complete crop destruction. While not the main story, locally heavy rainfall and mainly minor/short-term flooding also occurred, with large portions of several counties receiving at least 1.50, much of which fell in a short time. The overall-heaviest rain into the 3-4range concentrated in two main zones: 1) parts of northern Furnas/southeastern Gosper and western Phelps counties, including 3.21 at Loomis...2) much of York, eastern Hamilton and southern Polk counties, including 4.09 near York and 3.26 near Stromsburg. In all three Tri Cities, the evening squall line produced brief-but-intense rainfall that prompted short-term street flooding, with reports of stalled vehicles in Kearney and the closure of the Burlington Avenue underpass in downtown Hastings.||Taking a closer look at the timing and evolution of convection, things got underway between 2-3 p.m. CDT as severe storms rapidly fired up over northern Furnas and Harlan counties. During the following few hours, these storms organized into the aforementioned pair of noteworthy classic supercells, with the western one eventually dissipating over Phelps County, while the eastern one marched across Kearney County and into western Adams County before weakening and merging into newly-developing multicell storms to its south and east. Between 5:30-7:30 p.m. CDT the main focus turned to a cluster of strong-to-severe multicells that expanded across eastern portions of the area, yielding mainly heavy rain and small hail, but also the eastern Clay County wind damage. As these storms exited stage right into eastern Nebraska, nearly all of South Central Nebraska had roughly an hour of storm-free conditions before attention turned back to the west as the leading edge of the north-south oriented squall line entered Dawson/Gosper/Furnas counties between 8:30-9:30 p.m. CDT. Over the next 2-3 hours, this mostly (but not entirely) sub-severe MCS swept through the remainder of the area, with the leading edge of strongest winds/heaviest rain exiting into eastern Nebraska shortly after midnight CDT.||Finishing with a look at the meteorological background and starting with the mid-upper levels, this was a fairly evident severe weather setup as a semi-potent shortwave trough (by early-summer standards) tracked from Wyoming into western Nebraska during the afternoon-evening. At the surface, a well-defined, west-southwest to east-northeast oriented frontal boundary stretched from northwest Kansas to southeast Nebraska throughout the day, with most of the local area residing just to its north in an environment characterized by easterly breezes, high temperatures in the 80s F and plentiful low-level moisture with dewpoints between the mid-60s and low-70s F. Deep-layer wind shear averaged around 40 knots throughout the event, with mixed-layer CAPE peaking 2000-3000 J/kg during the afternoon. While the late-afternoon and evening storms were well-anticipated, if anything was a bit of a forecast surprise it was the early formation of the pair of intense supercells, which could have posed a more dire tornado threat had they tracked directly along the surface front instead of generally 10-20 miles north of it.

A brief touch down of a tornado occurred with maximum wind speeds of 65 mph.

An EF0 with a maximum wind speed of 65 mph occurred.

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 20:27 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:00 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 20:29 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:37 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.

Holdrege/Brewstr (HDE), 10 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), 74 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:40 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.