EF1 tornado, Friend, Nebraska, June 30, 2018

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

June 30, 2018

Touchdown

6:12 PM CDT (23:12 UTC)

Lifted

6:14 PM CDT (23:14 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.4 miles (2.3 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Saline County

Touchdown point

40.538, -97.287

Lift-off point

40.539, -97.260

Record number

1806301712-01

14 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 94 mph.

• Corn flattened. Narrow herribone pattern moving northeast.
• doors blown off south side of building. Door buckled inward on east side of building.
• Most roof panels lost on a machine shed in poor condition.
• Multiple trees broke off from 6" to 12"

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

Thunderstorms developed in two different waves on a southwest to northeast orientated cold front across eastern Nebraska. In the early morning of the 30th, a wave of thunderstorms moved northeast across northeastern Nebraska. One of the storms intensified and became severe with large hail over Knox County. Later in the afternoon, thunderstorms redeveloped over southeast Nebraska and produced brief tornadoes, damaging wind and large hail, and between 2 to 3 inches of rain. Another wave of storms late on the 30th, produced a brief tornado in Saline County.

Doors were blown off a barn, most of the roof panels were blown of a shed and thrown downstream, large tree branches were blown down, and a path of corn in a herringbone pattern occurred from a brief tornado 8 miles south southwest of Friend.

A second tornado started approximately 7 3/4 miles south of Friend and traveled 1.4 miles in a west to east direction. A storage shed moved over 1000 feet from where it started. Trunks of trees and large tree limbs were snapped, and metal panels were blown off a shed.

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

22 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:50 UTC, 22 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 18:40 UTC and running to 02:00 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 0.05 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.

The Grand Island radar (KUEX), 102 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:12 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.