EF0 tornado, Cripple Creek to Guffey, Colorado, June 30, 2023

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

June 30, 2023

Touchdown

5:30 PM MDT (23:30 UTC)

Lifted

5:49 PM MDT (23:49 UTC)

On the ground

19 minutes

Path length

3.0 miles (4.9 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Teller and Park counties

Touchdown point

38.770, -105.320

Lift-off point

38.730, -105.340

Record number

2306301730-01

15 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS BOU and 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.

• Trees down on both sides of 767 Sioux Road
• Trees down on both sides of Sioux Rd
• Several trees down on resident's property
• Shed ruined. More trees down.

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

Additional strong thunderstorms and weak tornadoes finished off June due to anomalous moisture in southern Colorado.

Two tornadoes down briefly in Elbert and Park counties in the morning, but no damage was observed. Later in the afternoon, another tornado entered Park County and uprooted several softwood trees. One shed was destroyed in Park County on Apache Rd. In Larimer County, a strong thunderstorm produced hail up to nickel size.

A tornado warning led to Emergency Managers doing an areal survey with a droned owned by the county. There was a loss of roof covering material (<20%) and one single structure with soft and hard wood trees uprooted along the damage path.

A tornado touched down and uprooted several softwood trees. Minor damage was also observed at a residence.

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 19:44 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), 105 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:31 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 2023 tornado in ColoradoEvery tornado in Colorado since 1950Warnings in force in Colorado nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.