Traffic camera image obtained from the Nebraska Department of Transportation shows a tornado crossing Interstate 80 near Waverly, Nebraska. Dozens of tornadoes hit the central United States with much destruction. | NEBRASKA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION/AFP/METSUL WEATHER
Dozens of tornadoes struck the Central United States on Friday and continued through Saturday, destroying homes, downing power lines and injuring at least three people, authorities said. More than 70 tornadoes were recorded across the country by the National Weather Service (NWS), most of them around Omaha, a transportation hub in Nebraska.
Images from storm chasers posted on social media showed immense tornadoes sweeping across the sky, turning up dirt, dust and materials in their path. In the Omaha suburb of Elkhorn, storms leveled several homes, tore off roofs and stripped trees of leaves.
“Emergency personnel continue to check damaged homes and assist injured citizens,” Omaha police posted on the social media platform X. Further south, near Lincoln, the state capital of Nebraska, a tornado struck a warehouse industrial. The roughly 70 people who were inside when the roof collapsed were evacuated, but three suffered non-life-threatening injuries, Lancaster County authorities said at a news conference.
Northeast of Lincoln, near Waverly, strong gusty winds knocked a train off the tracks, authorities said. About 11,000 homes were without power in Nebraska, according to the tracking website Poweroutage.com.
The NWS, the US National Weather Service, issued several urgent tornado warnings in several central US states on Friday and warned that severe thunderstorms would continue across the Central Plains, extending as far south as Texas.
Several buildings at the Omaha airport facility suffered significant damage when a tornado struck the airfield on Friday, but no one was injured. Airport weather observers spotted a funnel cloud shortly before and the airfield suspended operations a few minutes later.
The tornado passed through the airport and, although it did not hit the passenger terminal, it directly struck several general aviation buildings, officials said. The tornado’s funnel was visible to airport weather observers for a full 35 minutes.
GROVE REGIONAL AIRPORT/DISCLOSURE
Several damaged planes could be seen amid the wreckage scattered over hundreds of meters. With the passenger terminal still intact, airport operations resumed just under an hour later. Analysis teams from the United States National Weather Service found damage consistent with an EF-3 tornado in the region.
Tornadoes continued Saturday with more damage in this day-long severe weather event across the Central Plains of the United States. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center received more than 100 reports of severe weather Saturday, most of which were large hail, but several tornadoes were spotted in Kansas and Oklahoma.
Tornadoes are extreme and destructive meteorological phenomena characterized by intensely rotating columns of air that extend from the base of a storm to the Earth’s surface. These violent whirlpools are known for their devastating capacity, capable of causing great destruction in seconds to minutes.
The Fujita scale, often used to rate the intensity of tornadoes, ranges from F0 to F5, with F5 being the most powerful. Tornadoes often form in areas where masses of warm, moist air meet masses of cold, dry air, creating ideal conditions for these vortices to develop.
Tornadoes occur in many parts of the world, including Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. Even New Zealand reports about 20 tornadoes per year. Two of the highest concentrations of tornadoes outside the United States are in mid-latitude South America and Bangladesh.
About 1,200 tornadoes hit the United States annually. Because official tornado records only date back to 1950, the actual average number of tornadoes that occur each year is unknown. Furthermore, methods of detecting and reporting tornadoes have changed a lot in recent decades, which means that statistics now consider tornadoes that in the past would not be included in the accounting. Brazil does not have a robust database on these occurrences in the country throughout history and verification and event accounting projects are incipient.
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