EF0 tornado, Lemond to Ellendale, Minnesota, August 13, 2019

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

August 13, 2019

Touchdown

4:24 PM CDT (21:24 UTC)

Lifted

4:34 PM CDT (21:34 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

5.9 miles (9.5 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$1,000

County

Steele County

Touchdown point

43.976, -93.364

Lift-off point

43.899, -93.313

Record number

1908131524-01

8 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 65 mph.

• Tornado in grove of trees per video
• Approximate position of tornado based on video.
• Drone video showing damage to a bean field in a north/south pattern and also a hoop shed that got blown and rolled to the ssw. Multiple videos and pictures show the tornado.
• Start of tornado per drone video

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

During the afternoon of Tuesday, August 13th, severe storms developed along a line of instability across central, and southern Minnesota. Spotters and storm chasers video taped numerous funnel clouds across southern Minnesota> Three of these funnel clouds briefly touched the ground, but no damage was reported. Some corn was flattened on one of the touchdowns near Ellendale. Some of the storms in the afternoon did produce large hail in Dakota County where ping pong size hail was reported near New Trier.

Multiple storms chasers, spotters and citizens filmed and photographed this tornado. It mostly moved across fields, and there was minor damage to one soybean field. It blew a portable hoop barn across a field. There was a two mile gap in the middle of its path where it did not appear to be in contact with the ground, but video and pictures show the parent funnel cloud remained consistently evident.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

9 minutes of warning. NWS MPX issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:15 UTC, 9 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:45 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 19:49 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.

Owatonna (OWA), 22 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Minneapolis radar (KMPX), 103 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:26 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 2019 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.