EF1 tornado, Rusk to Colfax, Wisconsin, June 27, 2014

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

June 27, 2014

Touchdown

3:03 PM CDT (20:03 UTC)

Lifted

3:18 PM CDT (20:18 UTC)

On the ground

15 minutes

Path length

7.0 miles (11.3 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$1.2 million

County

Dunn County

Touchdown point

44.929, -91.767

Lift-off point

45.022, -91.709

Record number

1406271403-01

25 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS MPX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 88 mph.

• Large tree down on fence, fence destroyed.
• Smaller metal outbuilding destroyed in school's football field.
• Collapse of metal storage building near Colfax school.
• Thrown debris of metal outbuilding.

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

A line of thunderstorms moved northward across west central Wisconsin during the afternoon of Friday, June 27th. One of the storms produced a tornado around Colfax that had a damage track of 7 miles. The worst damage was at the local high school where damage to the school HVAC units on the roof occurred, plus several storage sheds and an athletic metal building were completely destroyed. Lightning also struck during the Cadott Country Fest, with minor injuries to two people.

A storm survey indicated that most of the damage was rated EF-0 with winds up to 85 mph. However, the tornado did briefly strengthen to EF-1 on the northeast side of Colfax, at the local high school where a shed was destroyed and two HVAC units where blown off the roof. This is where the winds may have reached 90 mph. The tornado was often less than 25 yards wide but it did widen to a maximum of 100 yards at the local high school athletic field.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 20:06 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.

Menomonie WI (LUM), 14 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The La Crosse radar (KARX), 135 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:01 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.

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 2014 tornado in WisconsinEvery tornado in Wisconsin since 1950Warnings in force in Wisconsin nowThe forecast where you are

7 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.