Unrated tornado, Dawson, Nebraska, May 21, 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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

May 21, 2019

Touchdown

7:43 PM CDT (00:43 UTC)

Lifted

7:45 PM CDT (00:45 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.7 miles (2.7 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Richardson County

Touchdown point

40.066, -95.828

Lift-off point

40.090, -95.824

Record number

1905211843-01

17 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX and NWS TOP, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 142 mph.

• Emergency manager reported the electrical pole was snapped. Can also see the track in the field.
• Brick porch collapsed, not reenforced with rebar but filled with concrete.
• Northeast portion of the home. Sitting room off the main portion of the home.
• tops of trees broken 1/2 mile north of 720 road.

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

A warm front moving northward through the region triggered a cluster of severe thunderstorms across southeast Nebraska and southwest IA during the evening of May 21 and early in the morning on May 22. Two brief EF0 tornado touchdowns were reported in southeast Nebraska.

A storm chaser videoed a brief touched down near NE Highway 8 south of Dawson.

Storm chasers and a sheriff deputy collected video of a small tornado that moved north-northeast in open fields south of Dawson, NE. No discernible damage was noted from this tornado.

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

33 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:10 UTC, 33 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:45 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 23:54 UTC and running to 02:23 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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 Topeka radar (KTWX), 125 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:41 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

30 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.