EF0 tornado, Pipestone, Minnesota, June 11, 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

June 11, 2019

Touchdown

4:19 PM CDT (21:19 UTC)

Lifted

4:20 PM CDT (21:20 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.1 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Pipestone County

Touchdown point

44.003, -96.327

Lift-off point

44.004, -96.327

Record number

1906111519-01

2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS FSD, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• Metal panels removed from northwest side of roof. Metal door on east side pulled in slightly. Image courtesty of Pipestone County Emergency Management.
• Rougly 10X5 foot section of roof removed on the south facing side of apartment/condo building. Image courtesy of Pipestone County Emergency Managment.

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

Approach of a cold core upper level low resulted in bands of diurnal convective development. Instability was quite limited, as much as 500-1000 J/kg with weak deep-layer shear of around 20 knots, so the favored convective mode was short-lived pulse storms which remained disorganized.

A brief and small landspout occurred in the northwest side of Pipestone, causing minor damage to three buildings. Two metal sheds sustained damage to small sections of roof and door panels. The tornado then crossed a street and hit an apartment building where a 10 foot by 5 foot section of the south facing roof was removed. The average path width was 10 yards.

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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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 Sioux Falls radar (KFSD), 56 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:17 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.