The 1980 Grand Island tornado outbreak hits Nebraska, causing five deaths and $300 million (equivalent to $872 million in 2016) worth of damage.
The 1980 Grand Island tornado outbreak, also known as The Night of the Twisters, was a tornado outbreak that produced a series of destructive tornadoes that affected the city of Grand Island, Nebraska, on Tuesday, June 3, 1980. Seven tornadoes touched down in or near the city that night, killing five people and injuring 200.
The name generally referred to by Grand Island area residents for the event, "The Night of the Twisters", comes from the semi-fictionalized book of the same name, loosely based on the June 3rd, 1980 tornadoes, by author Ivy Ruckman, which in turn inspired a made-for-TV movie that premiered on The Family Channel (now Freeform) in February 1996. While the outbreak is best known for the Grand Island tornado family on June 3, the event as a whole produced 29 tornadoes across two days, causing severe damage as far east as Pennsylvania. In addition to the five deaths that occurred in the Grand Island area, the outbreak injured a total of 413 across seven states.