Tornadoes · United States · Nebraska · 2024
EF0 tornado, Wisner, Nebraska, June 15, 2024
This EF0 tornado ran 1.1 miles across Cuming County on June 15, 2024, touching down at 6:57 PM CDT and reaching 25 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF0
- Date
- June 15, 2024
- Touchdown
- 6:57 PM CDT (23:57 UTC)
- Lifted
- 6:58 PM CDT (23:58 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 1.1 miles (1.7 km)
- Path width
- 25 yards (23 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Cuming County
- Touchdown point
- 42.038, -97.019
- Lift-off point
- 42.049, -97.005
- Record number
- 2406151757-01
The damage survey
3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 84 mph.
- Very minor sun-shade damage at feedlot.
- Ending point based on video and witness account.
- Window broke out of home and a few old trees were snapped.
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
What the Weather Service recorded
On the morning of the 15th, upper air analysis showed a shortwave trough centered over the High Plains. At the surface, a warm front draped across the Plains slowly lifted north throughout the day, eventually stalling out across eastern Nebraska and down into northwestern Missouri. That afternoon, two areas of thunderstorm development was noted, one in northeast Kansas and another in northeast Nebraska. The thunderstorms in northeast Kansas quickly grew upscale into an MCS bringing strong winds and a brief spin-up tornado to southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa. The thunderstorms in northeast Nebraska were tied to a lingering MCV, with the storm mode initially remaining as clustered supercells. This brought large hail and several tornadoes across northeast Nebraska before finally growing upscale into a second MCS and tracking east into west-central Iowa.
This is a continuation of the EF-0 tornado that occurred in northeast Stanton County. This tornado did not produce any further damage in Cuming County. The end of the tornadoes track was determined using chaser footage. The peak estimated windspeeds in this tornado were 70 miles per hour, with a width of 25 yards.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
15 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:42 UTC, 15 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:15 UTC.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:52 UTC and running to 03:00 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20:52 UTC | 03:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | OAX |
| 23:01 UTC | 23:31 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
| 23:25 UTC | 00:30 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
| 23:42 UTC | 00:15 UTC | Tornado Warning | OAX |
| 00:06 UTC | 00:14 UTC | Tornado Warning | OAX |
| 00:10 UTC | 00:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | OAX |
| 00:22 UTC | 00:32 UTC | Tornado Warning | OAX |
| 00:24 UTC | 00:39 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
| 00:36 UTC | 01:15 UTC | Tornado Warning | OAX |
| 00:42 UTC | 01:30 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
| 00:53 UTC | 02:50 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | OAX |
| 00:56 UTC | 01:45 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
| 01:07 UTC | 01:45 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
| 02:57 UTC | 12:45 UTC | Flood Warning | OAX |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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 air that afternoon
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.
Omaha, NE (KOAX), 00:00Z
0.0 hours before the tornado, 96 km from the path. June 16, 2024.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 2168 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -17 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 3121 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 848 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 33 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 37 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 323 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 532 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 3.3
- Supercell composite
- 21.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.3 K/km
The radar
The Omaha radar (KOAX), 97 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:56 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22:50 UTC | TORNADO | 4 Ssw Battle Creek | Madison, NE | |
| 23:25 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 9 Ne Newman Grove | Madison, NE | |
| 23:37 UTC | TORNADO | 7 S Winside | Stanton, NE | EF-0. NWS in collaboration with Stanton County Emergency Management confirmed that a tornado occurred at this location. This was a very brief tornado caused window damage to a home and several trees sustained damage. |
| 23:42 UTC | FLOOD | 2 Ne Hoskins | Wayne, NE | Delayed report. Water partially covering county road near Hoskins. |
| 23:45 UTC | HAIL 1.75 | 3 N Creston | Stanton, NE | Approximately a 5 mile long by 2 mile wide swath of hail with up to golfball size observed. |
| 23:55 UTC | FLASH FLOOD | Norfolk | Madison, NE | Delayed report. Lots of street flooding reported in Norfolk. |
| 23:56 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 2 Nne Pilger | Stanton, NE | |
| 23:56 UTC | TORNADO | 2 Ne Pilger | Stanton, NE | EF-0. NWS in collaboration with Stanton County Emergency Management confirmed a tornado damage path that began at this location. Documented from storm chaser video, this tornado developed just northeast of Pilger, north |
| 23:58 UTC | TORNADO | 4 Ne Pilger | Cuming, NE | |
| 00:06 UTC | TORNADO | 5 N Clarkson | Stanton, NE | EF-1. NWS in coordination with Stanton County Emergency Management concluded that an EF-1 tornado began at this location. Based on chaser video as well as drone footage, this tornado developed 5.5 miles north of Clarkson |
| 00:07 UTC | TORNADO | 4 N Clarkson | Stanton, NE | |
| 00:10 UTC | TORNADO | 5 N Clarkson | Stanton, NE | |
| 00:16 UTC | TORNADO | 7 Nne Clarkson | Stanton, NE | |
| 00:21 UTC | TORNADO | 3 W Pender | Thurston, NE | |
| 00:28 UTC | TORNADO | 8 N Howells | Stanton, NE | |
| 00:42 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 2 Nnw Emerson | Dixon, NE | Wall cloud to the north of Emerson briefly dropped a funnel cloud. Time and location estimated by radar. |
| 01:30 UTC | FLASH FLOOD | 3 Nnw Madison | Madison, NE | Delayed report. Many county roads flooded in addition to considerable lowland flooding. |
| 01:50 UTC | FLASH FLOOD | 8 Nne Clarkson | Stanton, NE | Delayed report. Highway 32 experienced flooding west of the Highway 15 junction. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2024 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 15, 2024
6 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.