EF0 tornado, Delano to Rockford, Minnesota, September 29, 2023

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

September 29, 2023

Touchdown

7:48 PM CDT (00:48 UTC)

Lifted

7:49 PM CDT (00:49 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Wright County

Touchdown point

45.105, -93.830

Lift-off point

45.112, -93.820

Record number

2309291848-01

26 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 87 mph.

• Several trees were broken or downed to their north.
• About one dozen trees were broken or uprooted, with some branches being tossed across a power line across the road. Did not have time to go into the farm.
• Thirty trees down, all to the nw or nnw. Trees landed on the adjacent garage. A boat on a trailer was lifted up and displaced. Hail damaged siding on the south side of house. Wind took several minutes to taper off. This modular home was well anchored and did not move. 2.9 inches rain. Water got inside the house after the top metal gave way.
• An eight foot wide plate glass window gave way, but did not shatter as it was blown into the house. A double garage door was bowed inward. An adjacent barn had some of its soffit ripped off.

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

Two waves of thunderstorms in central Minnesota produced significant wind damage. A brief EF-0 tornado occurred near Rockford, MN in Wright County during the first wave of storms. The strongest estimated thunderstorm gusts were around 75-80 mph given the nature of the observed wind damage.

A brief tornado touched down just south of the intersection of Wright County Road 14 and 30th Street Southeast. The tornado tracked northeast and mainly uprooted or broke over 100 trees, most of them at one farmstead. A storm survey was conducted and maximum winds were estimated at 85 mph.

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 19:40 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.

Buffalo (CFE), 6 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Minneapolis radar (KMPX), 35 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:47 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 2023 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.