EF0 tornado, Central City to Archer, Nebraska, June 2, 2023

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

June 2, 2023

Touchdown

4:53 PM CDT (21:53 UTC)

Lifted

4:58 PM CDT (21:58 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

4.2 miles (6.7 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$400,000

Crop damage

$1,500,000

County

Merrick County

Touchdown point

41.160, -98.040

Lift-off point

41.200, -98.100

Record number

2306021553-01

9 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GID, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• Report from Emergency Manager who witnessed and followed it. Location approximated based upon his information.
• Approximate end point based upon observation from Emergency Manager.
• Canopies at Feedlot destroyed.
• Gutter Damage. Tractor windows blownout.

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

For the vast majority of South Central Nebraska, this Friday simply featured varying amounts of much-needed rain from scattered-to-widespread showers and weak thunderstorms streaming across the area from south-southeast to north-northwest. However, one particular storm had other ideas during the mid-late afternoon, as it intensified and ended up spawning a few weaker tornadoes and localized, severe straight-line winds while tracking through the hearts of Hamilton and Merrick counties, causing some damage in rural areas but fortunately no human injuries. Although the finer details of the exact tornado touchdowns/locations proved a bit murky given that ground circulations were primarily intermittent/weak���along with a lack of reported damage (Hamilton County) and a lack of concrete photographic evidence of a tornado (Merrick County)���officially three tornadoes were declared (chronological order): 1) an EF-unknown with a nearly five-mile, south-to-north path from a few miles west of the Interstate 80 Aurora exit to just northwest of Aurora itself (no known damage)...2) a brief EF-unknown with a roughly one-mile, south-to-north track through fields near Highway 14 east of Marquette (no known damage)...3) an EF-0 with a four-mile, southeast-to-northwest path through rural areas four to eight miles northwest of Central City. This Merrick County EF-0 was the only one that produced confirmed damage, although some of it was likely also associated with an accompanying/nearby swath of straight line winds estimated up to around 80 MPH. Most notably, a large cattle feedlot four miles north-northwest of Central City sustained a variety of damage, including a portion of a large confinement building destroyed along with some outdoor pens and livestock shade structures. In addition, four head of cattle were reportedly injured, including two that had to be euthanized. Although this was the only known occurrence of concentrated structural damage, several irrigation pivots and a few trees were toppled, and an unoccupied tractor windshield was blown out. Turning to the Hamilton County tornado paths, there were no confirmed damage reports and the Emergency Manager characterized them as mainly broad/weak ground circulations (visually more resembling landspouts). That being said, the community of Aurora narrowly avoided a direct hit, as a KLKN-TV web cam captured a dusty circulation passing over Highway 34 on the extreme west side of town. ||Digging into the timing and meteorological background behind this rogue severe/tornadic storm, and starting from a forecast perspective, especially the tornadic aspect was largely an unanticipated surprise. All convection prior to this storm's development had been quite weak, and instability/shear parameters offered little hint of severe weather in the immediate area. The 20 UTC (3 p.m. CDT) Day 1 Convective Outlook from SPC called for only ���general thunder��� in the Hamilton/Merrick area, with the eastern fringes of a categorical Marginal Risk category (level 1 of 5) residing a good 100 miles off to the west. In the mid-upper levels, a large-scale (but weak/unprogressive) upper trough was positioned along a northwest-southeast axis over the western United States, while an upper ridge was centered over the Upper Great Lakes, and the net influence of these features placing South Central Nebraska under modest south-southeasterly flow aloft. At the surface, there was also an absence of noteworthy features, with fairly light south-southeast breezes supporting a seasonably-moist airmass with dewpoints into the low-60s (F). On the finer mesoscale level, there was likely at least a subtle boundary in the area prior to storm development...perhaps an outflow boundary kicked out from earlier/ongoing showers and weak storms, and perhaps also augmented by a differential-heating boundary (the latter evidenced by a modest surface temperature difference at 4 p.m. CDT between a rain-cooled 68 degrees at Hastings versus 81 at Aurora). No matter what ultimately caused this mesoscale accident to unfold, the storm made its presence known during its 1 hour, 45-minute lifespan, first gaining strength over the Clay/Hamilton County line around 3:45 p.m. CDT, crossing into Merrick County around 4:30 p.m. CDT, and rapidly weakening around 5:30 p.m. CDT while entering southwestern Nance County.

A tornado touched down in rural portions of Merrick County a few miles northwest of Central City, with a maximum estimated wind speed of 80 MPH along a 4-mile path. The most noteworthy damage occurred at a large cattle company feedlot, where a large portion of a roof was blown off of a confinement barn, several outdoor pens and livestock shades were destroyed, and a few head of cattle were injured and had to be euthanized. In addition, several irrigation pivots were overturned. Some tree damage was also noted along the path of the tornado. At one farmstead, the home suffered gutter damage and an unoccupied tractor parked nearby had its windows blown out. There was also some hail damage to crops in roughly a 2x2 mile area.

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

23 minutes of warning. NWS GID issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:30 UTC, 23 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:00 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:49 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.

Grand Island (GRI), 31 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), 101 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:55 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 2023 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

7 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.