EF0 tornado, Leyden to Lima Center, Wisconsin, May 26, 2024

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

May 26, 2024

Touchdown

5:00 PM CDT (22:00 UTC)

Lifted

5:21 PM CDT (22:21 UTC)

On the ground

21 minutes

Path length

11.8 miles (19.0 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$112,000

County

Rock County

Touchdown point

42.683, -89.110

Lift-off point

42.786, -88.925

Record number

2405261600-01

58 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 80 mph.

• Trees at corner of woods hit
• Trees in distance to the north
• Empty grain picked up and dropped
• Shingles from barn noted north of property on field

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

On a Memorial Day Weekend-Sunday, a line of storms looped up into southern Wisconsin in the late afternoon/early evening hours and produced 3 long track but weak tornadoes across Rock and Jefferson counties. These tornadoes were well documented via storm chasers and spotters along their lifetime. One of the tornadoes went through the north side of Milton and clipped the northern property of the high school there. Damage was minimal with just some bleachers thrown up into a baseball field.

Tornado mainly caused tree damage as it tracked from west of Janesville and ended northeast of Milton after going through the northern side of the city. Some areas west of Janesville had extensive, yet narrow tree damage. In Milton, it was mainly large trees that were knocked over though the DPW garage had two doors blown in. Storm chasers and spotters documented this tornado and shared their videos and pictures with NWS.

Tornado went through mainly rural areas of Rock county with some tree damage noted along the way.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 20:20 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.

Janesville/Rock (JVL), 13 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Milwaukee radar (KMKX), 46 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:00 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 2024 tornado in WisconsinEvery tornado in Wisconsin since 1950Warnings in force in Wisconsin nowThe forecast where you are

69 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 70 of them

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.