EF0 tornado, Falcon, Colorado, March 29, 2019

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

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

3. EF2111 to 135 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. EF3136 to 165 mph

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

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. EF5over 200 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

EF0

Date

March 29, 2019

Touchdown

4:15 PM MDT (22:15 UTC)

Lifted

4:20 PM MDT (22:20 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

1.2 miles (1.9 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

El Paso County

Touchdown point

38.900, -104.510

Lift-off point

38.900, -104.510

Record number

1903291615-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PUB, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• French doors opposite this wall were blown in and the wind pressure along the exterior wall blew out the wall and the brick became detached from their anchors.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A supercell thunderstorm developed over the Palmer Divide in northern El Paso County and moved towards Falcon, CO where several storm spotters noted funnel clouds dropping and lifting back up. Around 415 PM MDT, spotter confirmation, with video evidence, shows a small tornado did develop and move towards the east-southeast across Highway 24 near Falcon. NWS Pueblo storm survey team assessed the damage the tornado produced as high end EF-0 damage. An outdoor trailer/RV storage facility and nearby home were damaged by the storm.

Tornado touched down inside Falcon RV Storage facility, flipping several empty trailers/campers and shifting several others off their stabilization blocks. The tornado then lifted and traveled three-quarters of a mile to the southeast side skirting a primary residence off Elbert Road. Damage from the RV Storage facility was laying in the yard of the effected residence. The residence had one of it's exterior walls blown outward as wind got into the house through a set of french doors on the north-northwest side of the house. The remainder of the house was unaffected by the storm which then traveled a little farther southeast before dissipating.

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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:52 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.

Meadow Lake (FLY), 7 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Pueblo radar (KPUX), 57 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:13 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2019 tornado in ColoradoEvery tornado in Colorado since 1950Warnings in force in Colorado nowThe forecast where you are

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.