EF1 tornado, Bay State, Nebraska, May 19, 2025

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

May 19, 2025

Touchdown

5:29 PM CDT (22:29 UTC)

Lifted

5:31 PM CDT (22:31 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.7 miles (2.7 km)

Path width

70 yards (64 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Dodge County

Touchdown point

41.457, -96.871

Lift-off point

41.458, -96.838

Record number

2505191629-01

6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

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

On May 19, 2025, a negatively tilted mid to upper-level trough advancing into the central Plains helped spin up a surface low over eastern Colorado, which then progressed into central Nebraska and gradually deepened. Clearing skies and the erosion of earlier convective debris through the afternoon allowed for modest destabilization, with surface-based CAPE values exceeding 2500 J/kg. This was accompanied by strong deep-layer shear exceeding 50 knots, creating a favorable environment for severe storm development.||Thunderstorms initiated in the late afternoon across two main areas: near the surface low in east-central Nebraska and along a warm front positioned across southeast Nebraska. Initial convection took the form of discrete supercells before evolving into more organized clusters as the evening progressed.||In east-central Nebraska, supercells produced hail as large as 2.75 inches in diameter near Schuyler and damaging wind gusts up to 60 mph in Butler County. One of these storms also spawned an EF-1 tornado in Dodge County, which caused damage to campers, mobile homes, and trees. Meanwhile, in southeast Nebraska, another supercell produced hail up to 1.25 inches in diameter southwest of Pawnee City and a brief, intermittent EF-U tornado that tracked across portions of Pawnee and Richardson counties.

A tornado developed on the Platte River just west of County Road 3 at 4:29 PM CST. The tornado moved east on the river before coming on the north shore where it damaged some campers and mobile homes, as well as cottonwood and maple trees. This included one very large cottonwood tree which was uprooted and fell on to a home. The life cycle of the tornado was evaluated using time stamped video from storm chasers. The final part of the track was intermittent, and the entire tornado lasted for approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Damage to trees and homes indicated a narrow swath of peak estimated wind speed of 90 to 100 mph.

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 tornado watch, issued at 18:11 UTC and running to 00:15 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 19:52 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), 43 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:28 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 2025 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

43 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.