EF0 tornado, Fall River, Wisconsin, July 28, 2021

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 28, 2021

Touchdown

12:41 AM CDT (05:41 UTC)

Lifted

12:42 AM CDT (05:42 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.4 miles (0.7 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Columbia County

Touchdown point

43.356, -89.050

Lift-off point

43.353, -89.043

Record number

2107282341-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS MKX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 75 mph.

• Corn is blown back to the west northwest. Home owner says it hit fast. Tree tops blown into corn
• Pine trees topped and blown east

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

A round of severe storms tracked into southwest Wisconsin during the early morning hours on July 28th. Followed by another round of stronger, more widespread thunderstorms that begin to dive south across central Wisconsin late in the evening on July 28th through the early morning hours on July 29th.

This was 1 of 17 tornadoes to occur in Wisconsin on the night of July 28th into the early morning hours of July 29th. This was the 8th overall tornado for the event.|A line of storms developed in northern Wisconsin and pushed south into southern Wisconsin in the overnight hours of the 28th into the 29th of July with mainly brief tornadoes and damaging winds occurring. ||This tornado began and ended on one property northwest of Columbus, just west of Highway 16 and south of Hall Rd. This brief tornado did tree and crop damage.

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

15 minutes of warning. NWS MKX issued a tornado warning for this county at 05:26 UTC, 15 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 05:49 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 00:22 UTC and running to 07:00 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:04 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 Milwaukee radar (KMKX), 59 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 05:41 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 2021 tornado in WisconsinEvery tornado in Wisconsin since 1950Warnings in force in Wisconsin nowThe forecast where you are

10 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.