Unrated tornado, Jasper, Minnesota, May 30, 2022

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

May 30, 2022

Touchdown

3:15 PM CDT (20:15 UTC)

Lifted

3:16 PM CDT (20:16 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.2 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Rock County

Touchdown point

43.799, -96.445

Lift-off point

43.805, -96.433

Record number

2205301415-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS FSD, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

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

There was barely a break between the exit of the earlier morning severe convection, and development of the next round during the afternoon and early evening on May 30th across southwest Minnesota. A series of impulses moved northeast during the day, with a leading strong wave moving out of Nebraska by early afternoon. Storms blossomed near a cold frontal boundary toward the James River Valley, despite the limited diurnal destabilization, due to steep mid-level lapse rates which brought MLCAPE up to 1500-2000J/kg in the warm sector. Strong mid-level winds led to long, linear hodographs. With a warm front also lingering north of Interstate 90, storms that interacted with enhanced low-level shear in the vicinity of various boundaries produced a few brief tornadoes, but strong deep-layer forcing eventually resulted in an evolution toward linear structures with mainly damaging wind. Near the core of the upper level wave, a secondary band of thunderstorms developed across Nebraska during the late afternoon and raced northeastward through early evening, featuring mainly damaging wind gusts.

A tornado briefly spun up in open fields and lowlands around 3 miles north-northeast of Sherman. The tornado was viewed moving northeast and soon dissipated. The tornado caused no damage from which the NWS could assign an EF-scale rating. The average path width was estimated at 20 yards.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS FSD issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:14 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:50 UTC and running to 22:19 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:55 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.

Pipestone (PQN), 23 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Sioux Falls radar (KFSD), 33 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:15 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 2022 tornado in MinnesotaEvery tornado in Minnesota since 1950Warnings in force in Minnesota nowThe forecast where you are

36 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.