EF0 tornado, Oakland, Minnesota, May 26, 2020

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

May 26, 2020

Touchdown

7:25 PM CDT (00:25 UTC)

Lifted

7:28 PM CDT (00:28 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Freeborn County

Touchdown point

43.650, -93.062

Lift-off point

43.657, -93.057

Record number

2005261825-01

2 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 75 mph.

• Storm chaser filmed a tornado

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

The afternoon of Tuesday, May 26th, a surface low was noted in southwest Iowa with a broad area of southeast flow along a surface boundary northward across southern Minnesota. Scattered thunderstorms started to develop in the warm sector by the mid afternoon across western Wisconsin and Iowa. These storms moved northward into an area of MLCAPEs of 1500-2000 J/kg with bulk shear values of around 30 knots. Radar indicated that numerous storms were rotating along the boundary as they moved northward. Most of the storms produced funnel clouds, but two storms caused an EF0 tornado east of Albert Lea, and another in the southeast Twin Cities suburbs of Rosemount. A line of storms that moved northward across southeast Minnesota produced wind damage in Kenyon.

A storm spotter video taped a tornado as it began moving north-northeast through an open field. The debris cloud was visible, and then shortly thereafter, a few trees were knocked down.

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.

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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 22:01 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), 139 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:23 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 2020 tornado in MinnesotaEvery tornado in Minnesota since 1950Warnings in force in Minnesota nowThe forecast where you are

8 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.