EF1 tornado, Pine Ridge, Michigan, August 31, 2020

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

August 31, 2020

Touchdown

5:30 PM EDT (21:30 UTC)

Lifted

5:32 PM EDT (21:32 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (1.0 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Delta County

Touchdown point

45.739, -87.161

Lift-off point

45.748, -87.159

Record number

2008311530-01

An unusual low-topped supercell with no lightning spawned the brief spin-up of an EF-1 tornado west of Escanaba on the afternoon of the 31st.

An unusual low-topped supercell with no lightning produced a brief spin-up of an EF-1 tornado west of Escanaba. The rotating wall cloud and lowering funnel were observed by travelers on Highway US-2 as the tornado initially touched down near Pete's Pick and Pull Auto Parts snapping and knocking down several trees and utility poles. A couple of trees fell on one residence in this vicinity. The tornado then crossed US-2 moving northeastward as it caused extensive damage to to several storage units at Pine Ridge Storage. The tornado continued northeastward into a wooded area where hundreds of trees were snapped and uprooted. As the thunderstorm collapsed the damage evolved into downburst wind damage at the end of its path. The tornado only lasted two minutes.

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 16:30 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 Marquette radar (KMQT), 93 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:28 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 2020 tornado in MichiganEvery tornado in Michigan since 1950Warnings in force in Michigan 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.