EF0 tornado, Plum City, Wisconsin, July 5, 2016

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

July 5, 2016

Touchdown

8:35 PM CDT (01:35 UTC)

Lifted

8:36 PM CDT (01:36 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Pierce County

Touchdown point

44.687, -92.224

Lift-off point

44.685, -92.218

Record number

1607051935-01

11 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 90 mph.

• Water damage. Note sand on road and grasses bent down.
• Infow winds associated with the tornado
• Widespread downburst damage just south of tornado
• tree damage, which along with other damage, indicated convergence.

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

The afternoon of Tuesday, July 5th, two areas of thunderstorms that developed across west central Minnesota, moved southeast across central and southern Minnesota, and into portions of west central Wisconsin. ||The southern storm affected the southern part of the Twin Cities metro area during the late afternoon, and moved eastward into west central Wisconsin from near Prescott and Hager City to Eau Claire Wisconsin by early evening. These storms produced damaging winds and two tornadoes near Plum City and Porcupine.||The hardest hit areas were in Pierce County from Prescott and Bay City, eastward to Ellsworth, Salem and Maiden Rock. Hundreds of trees were blown down with some structural damage to bridges near Ellsworth and home damage in Plum City. Local law enforcement officers reported a swept away trailer house at Highway 10 and 490th Avenue in the Town of Salem. There was also damage to a milking parlor in Ellsworth where 3 feet of water filled the calf barn. ||The Pepin County Emergency Manager released a press statement that provided detailed information on widespread damage throughout the county. There was also structural damage to homes and agricultural, and at least three commercial properties in the Town of Waubeek's business park were damaged. ||In addition to structural damage to homes and businesses, crop damage was extensive and the local emergency management submitted a disaster report based|on the widespread nature of the damage.

A brief tornado touched down on the north end of Nugget Lake, knocking down trees. There was also downburst damage near the tornado (see separate entry for the wind damage).

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

9 minutes of warning. NWS MPX issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:26 UTC, 9 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:00 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 21:10 UTC and running to 02:18 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:50 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 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 Minneapolis radar (KMPX), 108 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:33 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 2016 tornado in WisconsinEvery tornado in Wisconsin since 1950Warnings in force in Wisconsin nowThe forecast where you are

9 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.