EF0 tornado, Decatur, Nebraska, June 12, 2024

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 12, 2024

Touchdown

7:12 PM CDT (00:12 UTC)

Lifted

7:13 PM CDT (00:13 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Burt County

Touchdown point

42.016, -96.248

Lift-off point

42.008, -96.246

Record number

2406121812-01

2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EFU. The highest wind the damage implies is 74 mph.

• According to eyewittness reports, this is the approximate start location of the tornado.
• According to eyewitness reports, this is the approximate end point of the tornado. Damage along the track included broken tree limbs and downed powerlines.

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

On June 12th, a low-amplitude shortwave embedded in northwesterly flow aloft ejected out into the central Great Plains. At the surface, a surface low-pressure was noted in North Dakota with a cold front extending south into South Dakota. Ahead of this cold front, a surface trough extended from south-central Nebraska into northeast Nebraska. Isolated thunderstorms developed on this surface trough late in the afternoon across far northeast Nebraska. These storms quickly intensified and dove south-southeast along the Missouri River. While a brief tornado was observed near Decatur, Nebraska, the more impactful hazard from these storms were the large hail they produced. Long swaths of golf ball to baseball sized hail fell along and just west of the Missouri River during the evening hours with these storms, including in the Omaha metro where baseball sized hail fell from downtown south into Bellevue.

An EF-0 tornado developed just north of Decatur, breaking tree limbs and bringing down power lines. The tornado lasted approximately 1 minute and was approximately 75 yards wide according to video and eyewitness reports.

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.

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 Marginal 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), 78 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:11 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 2024 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.