EF4 Tornado — Stanton, Nebraska

2014-06-16 · near Stanton, Stanton, Nebraska

Event narrative

This tornado began to the southwest of the Stanton and increased in intensity and size as it moved to the north northeast, passing to the west of the city of Stanton by about 2 miles. The tornado did the most significant damage to the north of Stanton where two farmsteads were completely destroyed just to the south of Highway 275. Here two vehicles, one car and one truck, were picked up by the tornado and tossed over a quarter of a mile. The tornado also completely destroyed two other homes and outbuildings, as well as debarking trees. The tornado continued northeast of Highway 275 for about 3 miles before roping out.

Wider weather episode

During the early morning hours of June 16th a warm, humid and unstable airmass rapidly returned to eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. As this air returned to the region, scattered thunderstorms developed during the early morning hours and continued into early afternoon. These thunderstorms were responsible for mainly large hail, some of which was very large. These morning thunderstorms reinforced a warm front across eastern Nebraska during the afternoon. Extreme instability developed along this warm front and allowed for isolated thunderstorm development by mid afternoon, which quickly become severe. A single supercell thunderstorm went on to produce 4 violent tornadoes over the next 2 hours. Other strong and severe thunderstorms moved into northeast Nebraska in the evening and continued into the early morning hours.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (41.8930, -97.3300)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 514013. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.