F1 tornado, Olathe, Colorado, May 6, 2005

1. F040 to 72 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

F1

Date

May 6, 2005

Touchdown

6:00 PM MDT (00:00 UTC)

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$20,000

County

Montrose County

Touchdown point

38.630, -107.980

Lift-off point

38.630, -107.980

Record number

136

A small tornado traveled across adjacent farms along Highway 50 in Montrose County, leaving a narrow damage path 50 to 75 yards wide. A three-sided wood-framed tin-roofed barn, approximately 35' x 12' was lifted up, flipped and carried 20 feet to the W-NW landing on its roof and crushing a large chicken coop. A small chicken coop on the south side of the barn was blown approximately 50-70 feet to the N-NW and its roof was not found. Small limbs were broken on trees, a number of shingles were torn from roofs and impaled on objects, and a trampoline and sheets of tin were lifted and blown up to 75 yards into a field. One of the residents was hit in the leg by a flying chair, and a horse was injured in the leg by flying debris. Residents at one of the farms said they heard a loud "wind" noise and saw a great deal of debris swirling around and a lot of dust obscuring their vision. Reports indicate a number of funnel cloud sightings in the area around the time of the storm damage.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:55 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

Montrose Co. Airport (MTJ), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Grand Junction radar (KGJX), 52 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:03 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2005 tornado in ColoradoEvery tornado in Colorado since 1950Warnings in force in Colorado nowThe forecast where you are

4 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.