EF0 tornado, Gilchrist, Minnesota, July 10, 2010

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

July 10, 2010

Touchdown

8:15 PM CDT (01:15 UTC)

Lifted

8:18 PM CDT (01:18 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.7 miles (2.7 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$200,000

County

Pope County

Touchdown point

45.461, -95.349

Lift-off point

45.479, -95.326

Record number

1007101915-01

Before the main afternoon severe weather, a small cluster of storms produced some dime size hail near Willmar, Minnesota, along with severe wind gusts in the mid morning hours. ||During the afternoon of Sunday July 10th, a cluster of thunderstorms developed along a southwest to northeast surface trough, near the Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota border.||Strong surface heating with temperatures in the mid to upper 80s, combined with high humidity levels to produce strong to severe thunderstorms. ||With effective bulk wind shear values around 35 knots, a few supercells developed west of Alexandria, Minnesota. As the cluster of storms continued to develop, they moved east and southeast along the strongest temperature and moisture gradient axis. This resulted in several funnel cloud reports, one brief tornado touchdown, and numerous reports of large hail, and damaging wind through the early evening hours across mainly west-central Minnesota, and a small portion of southwest and central Minnesota, before the storms decreased to mainly heavy rainfall reports. ||Some of the storms across Pope and Swift Counties of west-central Minnesota, merged and trained across the same areas for about two to three hours. This allowed for isolated three to four inches rainfall totals near Starbuck where flash flooding was reported.

Dozens of trees were broken, uprooted or toppled. Many trees fell on lake homes on the north side of Scandinavia Lake. A few sheds were destroyed, the roof of one house was partially removed, two campers were destroyed, and a pontoon was flipped. After the tornado moved away from the lake, a storm chaser filmed it during its rope stage moving across open fields. The chaser commented that the tornado was rain-wrapped, which was consistent with public reports.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 01:04 UTC and running to 04:48 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 00:40 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.

Glenwood (GHW), 19 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Minneapolis radar (KMPX), 155 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:13 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 2010 tornado in MinnesotaEvery tornado in Minnesota since 1950Warnings in force in Minnesota nowThe forecast where you are

3 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.