Unrated tornado, Kim, Colorado, May 30, 2021

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

May 30, 2021

Touchdown

2:23 PM MDT (20:23 UTC)

Lifted

3:30 PM MDT (21:30 UTC)

On the ground

67 minutes

Path length

19.9 miles (31.9 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Las Animas County

Touchdown point

37.090, -103.275

Lift-off point

37.006, -102.931

Record number

2105301423-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS AMA, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The highest wind the damage implies is 60 mph.

• Trees stripped of 30-40% of leaves from hail.

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

Severe storms were scattered across much of the area again on this day, as an upper low remained to the west and with high amounts of instability in place. While there were a few severe hail reports, the main concern was tornadic development across far southern Colorado. Another large tornado dropped southeast across open country in far southern Las Animas County, very near the track of the previous nights storm.

Cone shaped tornado spotter over rural Las Animas County.

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

0 minutes of warning. NWS PUB issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:23 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:44 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:46 UTC and running to 02:00 UTC.

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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:43 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.

The Pueblo radar (KPUX), 183 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:21 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 2021 tornado in ColoradoEvery tornado in Colorado since 1950Warnings in force in Colorado nowThe forecast where you are

17 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.