EF0 tornado, St Benedict, Minnesota, July 15, 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

July 15, 2019

Touchdown

7:04 PM CDT (00:04 UTC)

Lifted

7:06 PM CDT (00:06 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Scott County

Touchdown point

44.596, -93.696

Lift-off point

44.598, -93.691

Record number

1907151804-01

14 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.

• Tree rotting on the inside

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

Several clusters of thunderstorms developed during the afternoon of Monday, July 15th in central Minnesota. A few storms also developed ahead of the storms in central Minnesota, and became severe west of the Twin Cities. Hail stones as large as 2 inches in diameter were reported around Delano, and the western suburbs of the Twin Cities. By the late afternoon, and into the evening, these storms become more wind producers. Several of the storms produced severe downburst wind gusts and caused damage to several trees throughout the Twin Cities metro area. An EF0 tornado also formed on the southern flank of the storms, east of Belle Plaine, and caused significant damage to a farm. ||In addition to the wind damage and hail, these storms were heavy rainfall producers. As the storms merged and trained over the same areas, rainfall amounts in excess of 3 to 4 inches occurred in portions of Hennepin County of the Twin Cities. ||Other areas in the Twin Cities also had excessive rainfall with numerous reports of 1 to 3 inches of rainfall in a short period of time. Flooding were observed in the typical low spots where runoff was too much to handle.

A NWS Storm Survey indicated a tornado touchdown southeast of Belle Plaine, and tracked a quarter of a mile to the northeast. It damaged a farm and uprooted several large trees. Maximum winds were estimated at 80 mph.

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

6 minutes of warning. NWS MPX issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:58 UTC, 6 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:18 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 21:38 UTC and running to 03:00 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:25 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.

Minneapolis - Flying Cloud (FCM), 31 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Minneapolis radar (KMPX), 30 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:02 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

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.