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EF2 tornado in Seward County, Nebraska

Tornado May 11, 2014 · Seward County, Nebraska

EF2
Rating
4.7 mi
Path length
330 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 330 yards (0.19 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado initially touched down southwest of Garland and was from the same supercell thunderstorm that produced the EF3 tornado that hit Beaver Crossing. Soon after this tornado developed it moved through a newly developed areas of homes along Sunset Rd to the southwest of Garland. Here the tornado was responsible for completely destroying several well built large outbuildings. In addition the tornado damaged two homes where the roofs were partially removed, as well downing numerous trees in this area. The tornado continued east along US Highway 34 while weakening, but still damaging small outbuildings and breaking tree limbs.

The wider storm

One long-tracked supercell thunderstorm, and several other shorter-lived storms spawned tornadoes across eastern Nebraska during the late afternoon and evening hours of May 11th. The storms developed near the intersection of a warm front and dry-line/cold front in south central Nebraska then tracked northeast along the warm front toward the Lincoln and Omaha areas. Conditions in the area were very unstable with temperatures in the 80s to around 90 south of the warm front with dew point temperatures in the 60s. In total 12 tornadoes were recorded in the Omaha/Valley warning area with several others in the Hastings forecast area. The storms also produced very heavy rainfall which caused some flooding, mostly north through west and southwest of Lincoln.

Began near Ruby (40.8720, -97.0351).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

10 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 506837. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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