EF0 tornado, Superior, Nebraska, May 27, 2019

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

May 27, 2019

Touchdown

10:45 PM CDT (03:45 UTC)

Lifted

10:46 PM CDT (03:46 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$75,000

County

Nuckolls County

Touchdown point

40.027, -98.070

Lift-off point

40.027, -98.069

Record number

1905272145-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GID, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The highest wind the damage implies is 60 mph.

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

Severe hail and winds occurred in a few spots, along with a brief tornado on this Memorial Day (Monday) evening. However, the biggest story was repeated waves of heavy rain from the 26th that resulted in extensive flooding, and more heavy rain was to come. During the evening, several thunderstorms developed over north central Kansas. All but one of these storms moved northeast into south central Nebraska and affected areas mainly along and east of Highway 281 between 830 and 1130 PM CST. These storms generally remained sub-severe, but a brief EF-0 tornado occurred in Superior at 945 PM CST. The storms had congealed and become quasi-linear, but the low-level and deep-layer shear and SRH were very high, resulting in a shear-dominant line with the most intense cores at the back edge of the line. Along the updraft-downdraft convergence zone, a very small, brief mesovortex formed and produced the tornado. This occurred within a developing bookend vortex, just north of the rear-inflow notch. The one storm that moved different from all the others was a left-moving supercell that originated from a cell split over Rooks county Kansas. That storm moved due north from Alma to Kearney to Loup City from 8 to 945 PM CST, producing quarter size hail in Wilcox and 1 to 2 inch hail in Kearney. Meanwhile, scattered thunderstorms were on-going over southwest Nebraska. These storms entered western Dawson county around 10 PM CST, and during the following two hours these storms organized into a squall line that extended from Ord to Loup City to Lexington to near McCook by 12 AM CST. These storms produced golf ball size hail in and east of Gothenburg, and measured winds of 58 MPH at Cozad. Quarter size hail also occurred in Miller and Ravenna. This line broken into two separate lines, one of which moved east between Interstate 80 and Highway 6, and the other north of the Interstate. The storms remained sub-severe, but a wind gust of 55 MPH was measured at the Hastings airport, and nickel size hail occurred in York. A third cluster of scattered storms developed over southwest Nebraska around midnight. These storms consolidated into a multicell cluster and moved from west to east across the region from 2 to 530 AM CST Tuesday the 28th. These storms were not severe, but they added to the rainfall totals. Total rainfall amounts from all three thunderstorm episodes were not excessive, but given that 2 to 4 inches fell across a large portion of south central Nebraska just 24 hours before, an additional 1 to 2 inches was not needed. ||Water levels were already rising on area creeks and rivers from the heavy rain Sunday night. Flooding began to occur as an increasing number of creeks and rivers overflowed their banks through the day. Minor flooding began around sunrise Monday on the upper portions of the Little Blue River from southeastern Adams county into northern Nuckolls county. The Republican River at Riverton had also risen above flood stage. Thompson Creek, which also passes through Riverton, rapidly increased to moderate flood stage. Whatever impacts might have occurred were not known. In Polk county, extensive flooding resulted in numerous road closures. Bridges on gravel roads had water flowing over them. Highway 81 between Osceola and Shelby was closed because it was impassable. The emergency manager stated that the flooding was worse than what occurred in March of this year. Throughout the day, extensive flooding developed over more and more low-lying areas, creeks, and rivers in south central Nebraska. Numerous mostly gravel roads were impassable. All of the counties along and south of the Platte River were affected, although the Platte River itself did not flood. As flooding worsened along the Little Blue River, the Crystal Lake State Recreation Area near Ayr had to be evacuated and closed. Highway 5 north of Deshler was closed due to the Little Blue River. U.S. Highway 6 near Sutton was closed due to floodwater covering the road. The Republican River also went into flood from Guide Rock to Hardy. Across Hamilton, York, and Polk counties, the West Fork of the Big Blue River, the Big Blue River, Lincoln Creek, and Beaver Creek all flooded. In Merrick county, extensive flooding occurred due to Prairie and Silver Creeks. In Dawson and Buffalo counties, Buffalo and Spring Creeks flooded, as well as Mud Creek near Ravenna. Prairie Dog Creek also flooded southwest of Harlan County Lake. This was the second significant flood to occur since the record and near-record flooding in March 2019.||A quasi-stationary front extended from the Mid-Atlantic across the Midwest to low pressure over Iowa. The front then extended southwest across Nebraska and Kansas to another low over Colorado. In the upper-levels, a longwave trough was over the western U.S., with a fairly flat ridge over the east. An upper low moved from Nevada into Utah through the day with southwest flow over the Central Plains. Just before the storms moved into south central Nebraska, temperatures were in the 70s, with dewpoints in the 60s. Despite low mid-level lapse rates, MUCAPE was between 2000 and 3000 J/kg. Deep layer shear was very strong (60-70 kt), with 0-3 km SRH 250-500 m2/s2, with the highest values on the cool side of the front, where low-level winds were most-backed. The persistence of the atmosphere to initiate multiple thunderstorm episodes was impressive, but even more impressive was that they each moved downstream over the same area, between the surface and 850 mb fronts. The initial storms clearly did not exhaust the instability. Through the night, the low over Colorado moved into western Kansas. This maintained the low-level jet, which terminated at the 850 mb front. The low-level jet did not move. The 850 mb front remained stalled near the Kansas-Nebraska border, along with the terminus of maximum 850 mb moisture transport and the 850 mb theta-e ridge.

A brief tornado touched down in the center of Superior and severely damaged a detached garage. Shingle and gutter damage was also noted at the adjacent house. Fence and tree damage was common in the neighborhood. This tornado had an estimated maximum wind speed of 81 MPH.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 01:02 UTC and running to 07:00 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:18 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.

Hebron (HJH), 43 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), 45 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:48 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

62 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 63 of them

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.