Destructive Late-April Tornadoes in Nebraska, Iowa, and Oklahoma

CoreLogic estimates tornadoes on April 26-27 damaged and destroyed up to 7,000 homes and businesses

Multiple severe weather systems, or severe convective storms (SCS), crossed the Great Plains starting Friday, April 26, and continued through Saturday, April 27. A strong, low-pressure system ushered in the requisite meteorological ingredients to create multiple, violent supercells that produced tornadoes across Oklahoma, nearby Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, and in southwest Iowa.

CoreLogic Estimate: 7,229 Homes Potentially Sustained Tornado Damage

CoreLogic estimated that tornadoes across Nebraska, Iowa, and Oklahoma may have damaged¹ 7,229 single- and multifamily residential properties across the country from April 26 to 27. The combined reconstruction cost of the 7,229 residential properties is $2.1 billion (Table 1).

Note, not all homes within the tornado path boundaries were damaged. Homes that were damaged may not be total losses up to the full reconstruction cost value.

Tornadoes on April 26 most heavily impacted — as measured by the number of residential properties with a 30% or greater chance of tornadic damage — Polk County, Iowa (2,000 homes) and Douglas County, Nebraska (1,000 homes). Tornadoes on April 27 may have damaged the most homes in Murray County, Oklahoma.

CoreLogic | Weather Verify captured the tornado footprints (Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2). The footprints and probabilities of tornadic damage are available on the CoreLogic Insight™ platform.

On Friday, April 26, tornadoes stretched northeast starting outside the Lincoln, Nebraska area (Figure 1.1).

Videos and images from Waverly, Nebraska showed a large tornado crossing Interstate 80 and heavily damaging a Garner Industries facility. Later that same day, multiple tornadoes formed near the Omaha area and traveled northeast into Iowa (Figure 1.2).

One tornado in particular crossed the Nebraska and Iowa border near Blair, Nebraska, which is home to several industrial facilities, including Cargill, an agricultural services plant; Evonik, a chemical plant; and NatureWorks, a biotechnology company. Fortunately, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant south of Blair on the Missouri River was unharmed.

A second outbreak of tornadoes struck on Saturday, April 27. This time the activity was primarily in Oklahoma. Much of the reported tornadic damage was in smaller towns outside of major city centers. For example, tornadoes tore through the town of Sulphur in Murray County, which is southeast of Oklahoma City where there is a population of approximately 5,000 people. Some of the damage across Oklahoma was incredibly severe (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Photos of tornadic damage in Marietta, Oklahoma near the Texas border. The NWS confirmed that this tornado was EF-4 strength

Visualize Hazard Footprints and Manage Your Portfolio With Insight™

Insight™ is an interactive, geospatial mapping solution that provides forecasting as well as real-time and forensic weather data to users — all from a single platform.

Users can visualize storm warnings, watches, alerts, and the impacts of a weather event in the aftermath of activity. Such data includes tropical storm and hurricane wind speeds at the parcel level.

CoreLogic | Weather Verify powers the hail, wind, and tornado impact visualizations. CoreLogic | Weather Verify combines the best aspects of point observations — providing a high degree of certainty once quality controlled — and high-resolution weather radar data. Proprietary algorithms generate hail size, wind speed, and tornado damage probability maps with output down to the neighborhood level (500-meter resolution). These digital solutions cover the majority of the continental U.S. and are available immediately after events occur.

This will be the final CoreLogic Hazard HQ Command Central™ update on the late-April tornado outbreak unless new data becomes available.

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Contact: Please email [email protected] with questions about the late-April tornadoes, CoreLogic | Weather Verify, the Insight™ platform or any CoreLogic event response notifications. Visit http://www.hazardhq.com for updates and information on catastrophes across the globe.

[1] This accounts for all residential properties with at least a 30% chance of experiencing tornadic damage.