Unrated tornado, Bookwater, Nebraska, May 18, 2026

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, as surveyed

Unrated, preliminary

Date

May 18, 2026

Touchdown

4:34 PM CDT (21:34 UTC)

Lifted

4:35 PM CDT (21:35 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (1.0 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Pawnee County

Touchdown point

40.050, -96.272

Lift-off point

40.054, -96.260

Surveyed by

NWS OAX

The office's name for it

6 SW Pawnee City

Survey last edited

May 27, 2026

Record number

None yet. SPC numbers 2026 in the spring of 2027.

Estimated time and location of tornado based on reports received from emergency management and radar interpretation.

Written by NWS OAX in the NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit. A survey is revised as better evidence arrives.

On the afternoon of May 18, severe thunderstorms produced tornadoes, damaging winds gusts, hail and flash flooding across southeast Nebraska. a strong shortwave trough ejected eastward across the region, providing robust forcing for large-scale ascent. Despite lingering morning cloud cover, very steep mid-level lapse rates combined with the daytime heating of a moist low-level airmass to generate strong instability south of an advancing cold front. Mesoanalysis revealed strong theta-e advection extending from central Kansas through southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa, highlighting the rapid return of a highly volatile environment. Thunderstorms initially initiated on the warm side of the boundary over northwest Kansas before additional development began over far southeast Nebraska by 2:00 PM CST. This convection initially exhibited discrete supercell characteristics before eventually transitioning into a broader multicell cluster. Additional cells developed north of the cold front across eastern Nebraska, bringing primarily an isolated hail threat. ||The system dropped large hail up to golf ball size (1.75 inches) and generated destructive straight-line winds, including a measured peak gust of 90 mph. The initial supercell storm mode was particularly prolific for tornadogenesis, resulting in 8 tornado across southeast Nebraska. While several of these tornadoes were brief, others caused concentrated damage to trees, farm outbuildings, and irrigation pivots���most notably in Johnson, Nemaha, and Richardson counties. In several instances, these tornadoes were embedded within even broader swaths of intense 80 to 95 mph downburst winds. As the storms transitioned into a messy multicell cluster, torrential downpours also triggered isolated reports of flash flooding.

Estimated time and location of tornado based on reports received from emergency management and radar interpretation.

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

9 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:25 UTC, 9 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:04 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:51 UTC and running to 00:44 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 20:05 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.

Marysville (MYZ), 38 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Topeka radar (KTWX), 117 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:35 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 2026 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

19 more have been surveyed in the United States that day, so far.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. A survey can be revised, so the rating, the path and the casualties can all still change.

NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, the record the survey teams file from the damage, and NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports. Neither is the official database for 2026, which SPC publishes in the spring of 2027.