Nebraska has two new blustery records: tornadoes in both November and December, and the latest tornado on record for a calendar year.
The latest twisters touched down in south-central Nebraska on Christmas Day, doing minor damage. One formed just before noon and tracked northeast for nearly 3 miles before ending half a mile south of Funk, a village of fewer than 200 people in Phelps County.
Rated EF-1, the relatively weak tornado damaged at least six power poles and four center pivot irrigation systems, according to the National Weather Service’s Hastings office. It came with winds as high as 100 mph and was on the ground for about 3 minutes, leaving a 200-yard swath of damage at its widest point.
The tornado was one of four dropped by a rare late December weather system. Two others in Nebraska, one southeast of Minden and another northwest of Gibbon, ranked as EF-0 and damaged outbuildings and center pivot irrigation systems.
Another EF-0 tornado hit the ground 4 miles northwest of Alton, Kansas, and slid northeast for nearly 2 miles, chewing up shelter belts, fencing, a bin feeder, a small shed and a house’s soffits and shingles.
So, not a lot of damage, but the late date and the coincidence of falling on Christmas left meteorologists shaking their heads.
“Severe weather potential had been in the forecast for at least a few days, including the outside possibility of a tornado,” said Mike Moritz, a Hastings-based meteorologist with the weather service. “But even with all that information, it’s still hard to believe we ended up getting tornadoes on Christmas Day.”
The storm came nearly one month after three tornadoes touched down in south-central Nebraska on Nov. 27 and caused minor damage. No injuries were connected with either the November or December storms.
Nebraska has seen winter storms spawn tornadoes in the past, including December 1975, January 1992 and February 2013, said Moritz.
“A wintertime tornado, it’s rare, it’s unusual, but it’s not unprecedented,” he said.
November tornadoes are slightly more common, having hit the state in 1956, 2000, 2003 and 2015.
But it’s the first time since records started in 1950 that they’ve hit in both November and December.
The Christmas Day tornadoes were spawned by a system that moved from the central Rockies through the Northern Plains and brought blizzard conditions to North and South Dakota. Nebraska just happened to be on the warm side of the storm, Moritz said.
The last time tornadoes touched Nebraska during the final month of the year was Dec. 13, 1975, when one funnel hit between Chester and Gilead and the other touched down near Steinauer in Pawnee County.
Before this year, Kansas had experienced eight December tornadoes since 1950. The latest date for a tornado recorded in Kansas was Dec. 26, 1959, when an EF-2 hit in Dickinson County.
This year, the time of day the Christmas tornadoes hit — around noon — also was unusual, Moritz said. The most common time is between 3 and 9 p.m.
BY NICHOLAS BERGIN Lincoln Journal Star | Updated 22 hours ago
December 28, 2016
