EF2 tornado, Emerald to Lakeview, Nebraska, May 5, 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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

May 5, 2019

Touchdown

5:38 PM CDT (22:38 UTC)

Lifted

5:39 PM CDT (22:39 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lancaster County

Touchdown point

40.784, -96.758

Lift-off point

40.785, -96.748

Record number

1905051638-01

18 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 119 mph.

• building not connected to slab
• Dairy Sweet ice cream shop destroyed. Structure was slab on grade construction and was not anchored to foundation.
• roof peeled back on Harley showroom.
• tornadosen in video from storm chaser. Brief touchdown in a field.

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

A cold front moving into the area triggered severe thunderstorms during the afternoon and evening on Sunday, May 5, 2019. Hail up to golf ball size occurred, wind gusts from 6o to 105 mph were reported, and 1 short lived EF2 occurred in Lincoln, NE.

Storm chaser video shows a brief tornado spin up in a field. EF scale is unknown.

A brief intense tornado vortex paralleled West Van Dorn St in Lincoln uprooting and snapping healthy trees along its path. The tornado hit a couple homes and produced roof damage. The tornado took a direct hit of an ice cream store and storage shed, flattening both. Damage was reported to the Lees Chicken restaurant. People were reported trapped inside for a brief period.

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 20:39 UTC and running to 01:20 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. The outlook in force was issued at 19:50 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 Omaha radar (KOAX), 68 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:40 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 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.