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EF1 tornado in Lancaster County, Nebraska

Tornado May 11, 2014 · Lancaster County, Nebraska

EF1
Rating
3.0 mi
Path length
400 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 400 yards (0.23 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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 developed between Waverly Road and Bluff Road west of NW 140th Street. The track was around 3 miles. The tornado appeared to be at peak intensity as it crossed Northwest 126th Street where a farmstead was significantly impacted with multiple outbuildings completely destroyed and minor roof damage to the house. Numerous hard wood trees were snapped in this area, and a hay bail was thrown nearly a half mile.

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 Malcolm (40.9211, -96.9135).

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 506838. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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