Unrated tornado, Meadow Grove to Newman Grove, Nebraska, June 15, 2024

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 15, 2024

Touchdown

6:14 PM CDT (23:14 UTC)

Lifted

6:15 PM CDT (23:15 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Madison County

Touchdown point

41.840, -97.690

Lift-off point

41.840, -97.690

Record number

2406151714-01

8 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 100 mph.

• Photo evidence and eyewitness reports of a funnel cloud with a short-lived ground circulation and dust cloud. Brief tornado at this location.
• Low-standing barbed wire fence blown down.
• Farming machinery tossed roughly 100 yards. Combines moved with fronts torn off. Cattle trailer crumpled and thrown several hundred feet.
• Open sided hay barn with metal frame. Debris lofted to north.

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

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 was a very slow-moving tornado that developed 7 miles south of Meadow Grove, destroying a metal shed and a cattle trailer. Maximum estimated wind speeds in this tornado were 100 miles per hour. The maximum width of this tornado was measured at 300 yards, with an average width estimated at 200 yards.

The office received photo evidence and eyewitness reports of a funnel cloud with a short-lived ground circulation and dust cloud. A brief tornado was determined to have occurred at this location. There were no damage indicators impacted, so the rating of this tornado is EF-U.

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

32 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:42 UTC, 32 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:52 UTC and running to 03:00 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 0.05 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 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.

Norfolk (OFK), 27 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Omaha radar (KOAX), 124 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:13 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

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.