Tornadoes · United States · Florida · 2015
EF0 tornado, Punta Gordo Clt Arpt, Florida, June 22, 2015
This EF0 tornado ran 0.6 miles across Charlotte County on June 22, 2015, touching down at 7:14 PM EDT and reaching 15 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF0
- Date
- June 22, 2015
- Touchdown
- 7:14 PM EDT (23:14 UTC)
- Lifted
- 7:15 PM EDT (23:15 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.6 miles (0.9 km)
- Path width
- 15 yards (14 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Charlotte County
- Touchdown point
- 26.918, -81.973
- Lift-off point
- 26.926, -81.975
- Record number
- 1506221714-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Deep moisture and light flow produced early morning showers and thunderstorms along the Tampa Bay coast. A lightning strike from one of these storms ignited a fire in a condominium building. Thunderstorms later in the afternoon produced a brief lived tornado.
Florida Emergency Management and local broadcast media relayed pictures of a funnel near Charlotte County Airport, with some pictures showing what appears to be the funnel touching the ground. No damage was reported. Location estimated from radar.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 20:07 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 surface observations
Punta Gorda (PGD), 2 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Tampa radar (KTBW), 97 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:13 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.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2015 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 22, 2015
26 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 22 | 2:26 AM CDT | EF1 | Mahnomen, MN | 0.2 | 30 | |||
| June 22 | 6:50 AM CDT | EF0 | Nicollet, MN | 2.8 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 8:21 AM CDT | EF1 | Fayette, IA | 1.5 | 50 | 2 | $100,000 | |
| June 22 | 8:50 AM CDT | EF0 | Crawford, WI | 1.3 | 35 | $10,000 | ||
| June 22 | 9:06 AM CDT | EF0 | Crawford, WI | 7.4 | 60 | $34,000 | ||
| June 22 | 2:30 PM EDT | EF1 | Ionia, MI | 4.6 | 100 | 5 | $3.2 million | |
| June 22 | 5:05 PM CDT | EF3 | Marion, IA | 11.1 | 575 | $150,000 | ||
| June 22 | 5:50 PM CDT | EF2 | Monroe, IA | 1.7 | 290 | $125,000 | ||
| June 22 | 7:08 PM CDT | EF0 | Gray, KS | 0.6 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 7:14 PM CDT | EF1 | Whiteside, IL | 2.2 | 75 | |||
| June 22 | 7:15 PM CDT | EF2 | Rock Island, IL | 4.2 | 440 | |||
| June 22 | 7:16 PM CDT | EF0 | Whiteside, IL | 2.6 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 7:16 PM CDT | EF1 | Whiteside, IL | 1.7 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 7:28 PM CDT | EF1 | Lee, IL | 7.4 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 7:53 PM CDT | EF2 | Lee, IL | 7.8 | 880 | 7 | $1.0 million | |
| June 22 | 8:19 PM CDT | EF1 | LaSalle, IL | 1.5 | 150 | $100,000 | ||
| June 22 | 8:50 PM CDT | EF1 | LaSalle, IL | 6.0 | 150 | $100,000 | ||
| June 22 | 10:00 PM EDT | EF2 | Saginaw, MI | 11.3 | 250 | 2 | $600,000 | |
| June 22 | 10:07 PM EDT | EF1 | Tuscola, MI | 22.9 | 250 | $501,000 | ||
| June 22 | 9:17 PM CDT | EF1 | Grundy, IL | 7.0 | 150 | $50,000 | ||
| June 22 | 9:43 PM CDT | EF1 | Grundy, IL | 0.8 | 100 | $50,000 | ||
| June 22 | 9:45 PM CDT | EF3 | Grundy, IL | 16.3 | 1,320 | 7 | $25 million | |
| June 22 | 10:08 PM CDT | EF1 | Kankakee, IL | 2.2 | 300 | |||
| June 22 | 11:55 PM EDT | EF0 | Saint Clair, MI | 0.6 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| June 22 | 11:46 PM CDT | EF0 | Kankakee, IL | 1.0 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 1:31 AM EDT | EF1 | Washtenaw, MI | 4.3 | 100 | $300,000 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.