Tornadoes · United States · Wisconsin · 2015
EF0 tornado, Glenmore, Wisconsin, June 15, 2015
This EF0 tornado ran 0.3 miles across Brown County on June 15, 2015, touching down at 3:09 PM CDT and reaching 25 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $100 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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
- EF0
- Date
- June 15, 2015
- Touchdown
- 3:09 PM CDT (20:09 UTC)
- Lifted
- 3:10 PM CDT (20:10 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.3 miles (0.6 km)
- Path width
- 25 yards (23 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $100
- County
- Brown County
- Touchdown point
- 44.399, -87.943
- Lift-off point
- 44.399, -87.936
- Record number
- 1506151409-01
The damage survey
1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS GRB, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 60 mph.
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
What the Weather Service recorded
Thunderstorms associated with a cold front that was moving across Wisconsin produced a brief tornado near Glenmore (Brown Co.) and a funnel cloud near Shirley (Brown Co.). The slow-moving storms also produced heavy rainfall that caused urban flooding as they moved through the area. Around 2 inches of rain fell in less than two hours in the Appleton area.
A weak, brief tornado produced very minor (EF0) damage near Glenmore, about eight miles southeast of Green Bay. A swing set was toppled and a small metal shed was pushed 20 feet. The time of the tornado was estimated based on eyewitness and radar.
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 General Thunderstorms 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.
Green Bay/Straub, WI (KGRB), 12:00Z
8.2 hours before the tornado, 16 km from the path. June 15, 2015.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 2 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -53 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1161 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 20 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 10 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 17 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 22 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 3.4 K/km
Green Bay/Straub, WI (KGRB), 00:00Z
3.8 hours after it, 16 km from the path. June 16, 2015.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -71354 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 5 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1006 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 26 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 4 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -41 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- -22 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.7 K/km
The radar
The Green Bay radar (KGRB), 18 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:08 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) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20:00 UTC | TORNADO | 9 Ssw Green Bay | Brown, WI | BRIEF, VERY WEAK TORNADO IN GLENMORE ON DICKINSON ROAD. SMALL AREA OF FLATTENED WHEAT/TALL GRASS. TIME ESTIMATED. THANKS TO WLUK-TV FOR SHARING VIDEO OF TORNADO WITH NWS. |
| 20:28 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | Shirley | Brown, WI | MULTIPLE REPORTS OF FUNNEL CLOUD MOVING SOUTHEAST REPORTED BY OFF DUTY FIRE DEPT AND TRAINED SPOTTER. HAS NOT TOUCHED THE GROUND. NO REPORTS OF WIND DAMAGE. |
| 20:28 UTC | FLOOD | Kaukauna | Outagamie, WI | WATER OVER THE CURB IN SPOTS |
| 20:50 UTC | FLOOD | 1 E Green Bay | Brown, WI | HEAVY RAIN FORCING STORM SEWER COVERS OFF ON MASON AND ROOSEVELT. REPORT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA. |
| 20:56 UTC | FLOOD | Appleton | Outagamie, WI | APPLETON POLICE DEPT REPORTS URBAN STREET FLOODING IN NUMEROUS LOCATIONS. REPORT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA. |
| 20:56 UTC | FLOOD | Green Bay | Brown, WI | CARS TURNING AROUND AT THE INTERSECTION OF MASON AND ONEIDA ST DUE TO URBAN STREET FLOODING. REPORT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA. |
| 21:20 UTC | FLOOD | 1 S Green Bay | Brown, WI | ON RAMP TO 41 NB AT VELP AVE CLOSED DUE TO URBAN STREET FLOODING. REPORT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA |
| 21:30 UTC | FLOOD | Green Bay | Brown, WI | WATER STOPPED TRAFFIC ON MASON NEAR MAIN IN EAST GREEN BAY |
| 21:30 UTC | FLOOD | Greenville | Outagamie, WI | RAILROAD TRACKS WASHED AT THE INTERSECTION OF MAYFLOWER ROAD. |
| 22:14 UTC | HEAVY RAIN 2.1 | 3 Wsw Howard | Brown, WI | STORM TOTAL. FELL OVER 4 HOUR SPAN. |
| 22:15 UTC | HEAVY RAIN 1.35 | Green Bay | Brown, WI | RAINFALL TOTALL. NEAR MCAULLIFFEE PARK |
| 22:18 UTC | HEAVY RAIN 2.69 | Appleton | Outagamie, WI | TOTAL RAINFALL |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2015 tornado in WisconsinEvery tornado in Wisconsin since 1950Warnings in force in Wisconsin nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 15, 2015
3 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
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.