EF0 tornado, Krider to (Bie)Beatrice Arpt, Nebraska, May 6, 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

May 6, 2024

Touchdown

7:07 PM CDT (00:07 UTC)

Lifted

7:08 PM CDT (00:08 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.6 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Gage County

Touchdown point

40.138, -96.749

Lift-off point

40.148, -96.737

Record number

2405061807-01

11 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 80 mph.

• A large hoop building, used to store road supplies, had a roof damaged.
• A covered porch, shed, and trees sustained damage at this location. First person accounts and details suggest that this was a very short-lived tornado.
• A cattle shed was damaged at this location. Eyewitness accounts and details are consistent with a short-lived tornado.

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

Upper air analysis depicted a negatively tilted trough over the western CONUS, with its axis extending from the central Rocky Mountains northwest into the Pacific Northwest. At the surface, a low-pressure center was deepening over the northern High Plains along with a secondary surface low in western Nebraska. Extending south out of these pressure centers was a Pacific cold front. At 21 UTC, a warm front was noted to extend southeast from southwest Nebraska into northeast Oklahoma. As the evening progressed, strong warm air advection ahead of the mature low-pressure pushed the warm front north into eastern Nebraska by 00 UTC. ||Along this warm front and ahead of the Pacific cold front, several lines of strong to severe thunderstorms moved through eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. The first line of strong storms moved through central and northeast Nebraska after 4:30 PM CDT. No severe reports were associated with these storms in the OAX CWA. Another intensifying segment of the same line moved into southeast Nebraska by 7:30 PM CDT, this time south of the northward advancing warm front. These storms tracked northeast through southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa, producing numerous severe wind gusts across the area and multiple spin-up tornadoes. The vast majority of wind gusts recorded with these storms ranged from 55 to 70 miles per hour. The strongest wind gust was measured at 71 miles per hour in Richardson County. 2 EF-0 tornadoes were confirmed in southeast Nebraska, both in Gage County. There were also an additional 3 tornadoes confirmed in southwest Iowa, all EF-1 tornadoes.

Storm spotters provided video matching up with a short damage path. The tornado damaged the hoop building that stores road supplies along Highway 77, proceeded northeast where it broke some tree branches and quickly dissipated. The peak estimated wind speeds from this tornado were at 80 miles per hour. The tornado had a maximum width of 30 yards and an average width estimated at 20 yards.

This short-lived tornado damaged a cattle shed, a barn, and a covered porch of a home. Eyewitness reports and details are consistent with that of a short-lived tornado. This tornado had peak estimated wind speeds of 75 miles per hour. The tornado had a path width of 20 yards.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:49 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:43 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.

Beatrice Municip (BIE), 18 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Omaha radar (KOAX), 135 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:09 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

40 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.