Tornadoes · United States · Utah · 2005

F0 tornado, Mt Pleasant, Utah, June 25, 2005

This F0 tornado ran 0.5 miles across Sanpete County on June 25, 2005, touching down at 5:00 PM MDT. It killed nobody, and did $10,000 of property damage.

The rating scale

Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.

  1. F040 to 72 mphthis tornado

    Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

  2. F173 to 112 mph

    Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

  3. F2113 to 157 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. F3158 to 206 mph

    Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

  5. F4207 to 260 mph

    Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

  6. F5261 to 318 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.

The record

Rating
F0
Date
June 25, 2005
Touchdown
5:00 PM MDT (23:00 UTC)
Path length
0.5 miles (0.8 km)
Path width
0 yards (0 m)
Deaths
0
Injuries
0
Property damage
$10,000
County
Sanpete County
Touchdown point
39.570, -111.420
Lift-off point
39.570, -111.420
Record number
234

What the Weather Service recorded

Brief touchdown flipped over a motor home and blew the roof off a shed.

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

The warnings

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 forecast that day

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:50 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 air that afternoon

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.

Salt Lake City I, UT (KSLC), 12:00Z

11.0 hours before the tornado, 141 km from the path. June 25, 2005.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Salt Lake City I, UT at 12:00Z on 2005-06-25Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 32 joules per kilogram, CIN -327, lifted condensation level 3065 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCLLFCEL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km15 km-30°-20°-10°0°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Salt Lake City I, UT at 12:00Z on 2005-06-25The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity 94 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 27 knots.19395878Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
32 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
-327 J/kg
Surface CAPE
91 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
3065 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
27 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
13 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
94 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
115 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
0.0
Supercell composite
0.0
0-3 km lapse rate
7.4 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

Salt Lake City I, UT (KSLC), 00:00Z

1.0 hours after it, 141 km from the path. June 26, 2005.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Salt Lake City I, UT at 00:00Z on 2005-06-26Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 85 joules per kilogram, CIN -44, lifted condensation level 3118 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCLLFCEL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km15 km-30°-20°-10°0°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Salt Lake City I, UT at 00:00Z on 2005-06-26The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity -4 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 25 knots.193958Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
85 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
-44 J/kg
Surface CAPE
177 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
3118 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
25 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
4 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
-4 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
102 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
0.0
Supercell composite
-0.0
0-3 km lapse rate
9.4 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

The radar

The Salt Lake City radar (KMTX), 207 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:01 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.

What was reported nearby

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

Time (UTC)ReportWhereCountyRemark
00:00 UTCTORNADO2 Ne Mount PleasantSanpete, UTSEVERAL PEOPLE WITNESSED A BRIEF TOUCHDOWN AT SKYLINE MOUNTAIN RESORT. TORNADO BLEW ROOF OFF OF A SHED AND TIPPED OVER A MOTOR HOME.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

This ground now

The live radar over the trackEvery 2005 tornado in UtahEvery tornado in Utah since 1950Warnings in force in Utah nowThe forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of June 25, 2005

3 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

DateTimeRatingWherePath (mi)Width (yd)DeathsInjuriesDamage
June 252:05 PM MDTF0Fergus, MT1.08
June 256:40 PM EDTF0Carteret, NC1.025$1,000
June 258:45 PM MDTF0Roosevelt, MT1.05

What this means

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.

Sources

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.