EF1 tornado in Seward County, Nebraska
Tornado June 4, 2008 · Seward County, Nebraska
NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Seward County → Butler County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.
The path drawn at its surveyed width of 440 yards (0.25 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.
What the National Weather Service wrote
This tornado started about 4 miles southwest of Ulysses in Seward county, crossed into Butler county about 1.5 miles south of Ulysses and then lifted around 1 mile east southeast of town. The tornado flipped irrigation center pivots along its path and caused tree and farm outbuilding damage. It was rated an EF1 in both Seward and Butler counties. The total path length in both counties was a little over 5 miles.
The wider storm
A stationary front over Kansas started lifting north on June 4th as an unseasonably strong upper level low pressure system was organizing over the central Rockies. This allowed very warm and unstable air to feed north into southern Nebraska and southwest Iowa during the afternoon on the 4th. Severe thunderstorms that developed by early afternoon on June 4 over central Nebraska quickly spread and developed into eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa through evening. A few tornadic producing supercells developed over the area...and many of the storms contained very heavy rain which fell on soils that were already saturated from significant rains recorded over the prior week. This caused areas of flash flooding and subsequent river flooding.
Began near Staplehurst (41.0115, -97.2702).
Other tornadoes from the same storm system
4 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.
Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 113551. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.
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