EF0 tornado, New Salem, North Dakota, August 30, 2013

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

August 30, 2013

Touchdown

7:10 PM CDT (00:10 UTC)

Lifted

7:15 PM CDT (00:15 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

2.5 miles (4.0 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Morton County

Touchdown point

46.877, -101.489

Lift-off point

46.871, -101.437

Record number

1308301810-01

Severe Thunderstorm Watch number 506 was in effect during this event.||A prefrontal surface trough stretched from north to south across western North Dakota and was the focus for convective initialization in the mid to late afternoon hours as subtle mid level impulses in zonal flow aloft moved into the Northern Plains.||Storms initially developed near the Canadian border over extreme southeast Saskatchewan, where the prefrontal trough intersected a surface cold front. This complex of storms remained just north of the International Border before becoming supercellular and turning southeast into far north central North Dakota. Another complex of storms developed across eastern Stark County. Eventually the entire trough axis filled in with convection, with both right and left moving supercells spreading eastward throughout the evening. The numerous severe thunderstorms brought widespread large hail and severe thunderstorm wind gusts to many locations.

A tornado was spotted on the ground north of Interstate 94 in rural Morton County. There was no damage reported and so the tornado was rated EF0.

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

32 minutes of warning. NWS BIS issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:38 UTC, 32 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:15 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 21:01 UTC and running to 04:00 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. The outlook in force was issued at 19:59 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 Bismarck radar (KBIS), 55 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:10 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 2013 tornado in North DakotaEvery tornado in North Dakota since 1950Warnings in force in North Dakota nowThe forecast where you are

1 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.