Unrated tornado, Oliver to (Ibm)Kimball Arpt, Nebraska, June 26, 2023

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

June 26, 2023

Touchdown

8:29 PM MDT (02:29 UTC)

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Kimball County

Touchdown point

41.200, -103.660

Lift-off point

41.200, -103.660

Record number

2306262029-01

8 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CYS, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• Farm equipment pushed back 15 feet with tree limbs and cinder blocks strewn across field.
• Full collapse of cinderblock and mortar wall.
• Tree branches scattered around area.
• Storage locker sheared apart.

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

A long-lived supercell thunderstorm tracked across Kimball and Cheyenne Counties during the evening hours on 6/26, producing multiple tornadoes and numerous instances of golf ball to baseball sized hail. Most notably, a 3.5 inch diameter hailstone was observed in the town of Bushnell. An official NWS damage survey confirmed an EF-1 tornado to the southwest of Kimball between 8:01 and 8:05 PM MDT. Additional severe thunderstorms occurred over Dawes County near Chadron later in the evening.

A thin rope tornado began along Interstate 80 around 5 miles southwest of Kimball at 8:01 PM MDT. The tornado remained over mainly open farmland south of the Interstate. The tornado did impact one property, where a cinder block outbuilding was destroyed. Cinder blocks were thrown approximately 50 yards in a scattered debris pattern north of CR 28. Additionally, a large shipping container was moved off its foundation by 6 inches. Finally, a large tandem-disk plow weighing 20,000 pounds was pushed approximately 15 feet in a field just north of CR 28. The tornado dissipated about 4 miles WSW of Kimball at 8:05 PM MDT.

An NWS Employee observed a brief tornado 2 miles S of Kimball.

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

30 minutes of warning. NWS CYS issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:59 UTC, 30 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 00:10 UTC and running to 06:00 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 01:07 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 Cheyenne radar (KCYS), 96 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:27 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

6 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.