EF1 tornado, Oconto, Nebraska, May 17, 2019

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

May 17, 2019

Touchdown

8:30 PM CDT (01:30 UTC)

Lifted

8:31 PM CDT (01:31 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

92 yards (84 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$15,000

County

Custer County

Touchdown point

41.077, -99.684

Lift-off point

41.078, -99.685

Record number

1905171930-01

14 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GID and NWS LBF, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 107 mph.

• building not anchored down
• Irrigation pipe moved up to 100 feet to the north
• metal wind break destroyed
• horse trailer lifted and moved 315 feet to the east damaging two wooden fences and a metal fence.

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

A strong upper level trough of low pressure lifted across the central Rockies during the late afternoon of May 17th. As this feature approached a stalled out frontal boundary, which was anchored along the Kansas and Nebraska border, thunderstorms developed and quickly became severe as they lifted north. A lone supercell produced multiple tornadoes while moving northeast through Frontier County. Two farms sustained damage with the Johnson's farm sustaining damage to every building with the tornado rated an EF-3. As storms moved northeast large hail and damaging winds were reported.

Tornado touched down in a field and damaged a pole barn, snapped a large tree and produced minor porch damage to a homestead. A horse trailer was rolled over two wooden fences and a metal fence prior to landing in a horse corral.

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

15 minutes of warning. NWS LBF issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:15 UTC, 15 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:01 UTC and running to 04:57 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:51 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.

Lexington (LXN), 33 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The North Platte radar (KLNX), 123 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:32 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 2019 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

21 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.