EF0 tornado, Meadow Grove to Madison, Nebraska, June 25, 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 25, 2024

Touchdown

6:11 PM CDT (23:11 UTC)

Lifted

6:16 PM CDT (23:16 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

1.8 miles (2.9 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Madison County

Touchdown point

41.970, -97.730

Lift-off point

41.950, -97.710

Record number

2406251711-01

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 EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.

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

A series of shortwave troughs traversing the northern CONUS brought unsettled weather to the area for the end of June. On the 21st, a stationary front was draped across northeast Nebraska into Iowa. Ahead of one of the aforementioned shortwave troughs, several rounds of strong thunderstorms developed near this frontal zone and moved across northeast Nebraska. At 8 pm on the 21st, radar imagery showed training thunderstorms had set up across central Nebraska. These storms moved into east-central Nebraska dropping 2 to 6 inches of rain across the Platte River Basin. As a result, minor flooding was observed along the Platte River in Dodge, Saunders, Douglas and Sarpy Counties. Further north in Knox County, additional rounds of thunderstorms brought flooding to the Ponca Creek, prompting emergency management to deploy sand bags. Flooding in these locations continued for several days before subsiding the 23rd.||Behind this first shortwave, a shortwave ridge moved out into the central Plains accompanied by a surface high pressure system. Afternoon high temperatures in the 90s and dew points in the mid and upper 70s brought excessive heat to much of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa the afternoons of the 24th and the 25th. Excessive heat was most widespread on the 24th, with heat indices across the entire WFO ranging from 107 to 120 degrees. Afternoon thunderstorms on the 25th mitigated excessive heat, though heat indices did hit 110 in far southwest Iowa. The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services reported 80 heat related hospitalizations across the state during this period of excessive heat. While many of the 19 counties reporting these cases masked the exact number of hospitalizations in order to protect personal health information, it was released that there were 37 heat related hospitalizations in Douglas County, 13 in Lancaster County, and 7 in Sarpy County. The vast majority of these heat related illnesses (66.25%) occurred at work or while participating in outdoor recreation. 12.5% were among the homeless population, and 8.75% of heat related hospitalizations were due to a lack of air conditioning. Furthermore, the age group most impacted by heat related illness for this event were between the ages of 20 and 29, accounting for 30% of heat related hospitalizations in the state.||On the 25th, another shortwave trough brought more unsettled weather to the region. A surface front was draped across eastern Nebraska and western Iowa when the first convection initiated over downtown Omaha. This storm quickly became intense producing multiple instances of 3 to 4 inch hail in the Omaha metro. As this storm weakened over eastern Sarpy County, additional strong to severe thunderstorms developed across northeast Nebraska. While the most widespread hazard was large hail up to the size of golf balls, two tornadoes were confirmed in Madison County. Later that evening, a bow echo developed and moved through the northern Omaha Metro, bringing wind gusts up to 90 miles per hour at Eppley Airfield and into northern Pottawattamie County. An additional line of storms developed after dark that night across southeast Nebraska and produced scattered damaging wind gusts, the highest of which was an 83 mph wind gust measured by emergency management in Jefferson County.||The unsettled weather at the end of June brought widespread excessive rain to much of southeast South Dakota and Northwest Iowa. Rainfall estimated from these storms showed a swath of 4 to 8 inches of rain that fell between Sioux Falls and Sioux City. The result of this rain and additional rain across eastern Nebraska and western Iowa was river flooding along the Missouri and Little Sioux the last week of June and into July. Flooding during this time frame resulted in numerous road closures, including I-29 between Council Bluffs and Missouri Valley. This stretch of the interstate was closed beginning midnight the night of the 25th, and remained closed through the end of the month. Levee breaches in Monona County on the 25th prompted several evacuations, as resultant flash flooding inundated multiple county roads and homesteads. No injuries or fatalities were reported from this. While flooding subsided in and north of the Omaha metro by the end of the month, river flooding along the Missouri persisted into the first week of July.

A landspout tornado developed in a field, eventually merging with the mesocyclone and taking on some briefly supercellular features. The tornado was over mainly open fields but did break one tree, a powerline, and damaged a small shed. Peak estimated winds in this tornado were 70 miles per hour, with a width of 50 yards.

Trained spotter, law enforcement, and storm chaser accounts indicate that a tornado developed in this approximate location, moved a short distance, and lasted for approximately 2 minutes before dissipating. No damage was reported along the track.

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.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 22:32 UTC and running to 04:43 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 19:39 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), 24 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Omaha radar (KOAX), 133 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:08 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

12 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.