EF0 tornado, Shoreview to North Oaks, Minnesota, July 18, 2015

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 18, 2015

Touchdown

1:00 AM CDT (06:00 UTC)

Lifted

1:03 AM CDT (06:03 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.9 miles (3.0 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$500,000

County

Ramsey County

Touchdown point

45.099, -93.115

Lift-off point

45.113, -93.082

Record number

1507180000-01

13 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS MPX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• Tornado End. Some trees toppled to the northeast, others to the southeast.
• Some trees toppled to the northeast, others to the southwest, others to the southeast.
• Trees were toppled over, with eight of them landing on this house.
• A few trees were toppled or broken in the area of the foreground (some not shown), but in the distance, one can see the tops of the trees damaged farther east.

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

Several severe thunderstorms developed in northeast South Dakota during the late afternoon of Friday, July 17th. These storms moved slowly initially across northeast South Dakota where severe wind gusts, very large hail and a tornado occurred. ||After 730 PM CST, these severe storms began to bow out across west central Minnesota from Morris, southwest to Ortonville. Severe wind gusts were reported in Madison to Appleton City as the bow echo began to accelerate eastward across southern Minnesota.||Numerous reports of downed trees, power lines and occasional hail occurred from the South Dakota, Minnesota border eastward to the Twin Cities, and into west central Wisconsin. ||Damage was more sporadic in western Minnesota, but became more widespread in eastern Minnesota as a more intense bow echo developed. A widespread area of trees and power lines were blown down across the Twin Cities metro area, with some areas measuring wind gusts up to 61 knots. ||One of the bow echo segments produced a brief tornado west of Watertown, where a storm survey indicated an EF1 occurred.||Another significant wind damaged area was in Goodhue County where winds up to 85 mph were estimated based on a local survey. ||At one point during the storm, 225,000 people in Minnesota were without power according to Xcel Energy.

A storm survey indicated that an EF-0 tornado touch downed in the northwest portion of North Oaks, near Charley Lake, and moved east-northeast to the southern side of Deep Lake, where the greatest number of trees were toppled and snapped. Some of the trees fell on houses, vehicles and other structures. The tornado had a path length of 1.9 miles with maximum winds of 80 mph.

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.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 03:43 UTC and running to 07:00 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 06:00 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 Minneapolis radar (KMPX), 47 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 06:01 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 2015 tornado in MinnesotaEvery tornado in Minnesota since 1950Warnings in force in Minnesota 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.