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EF0 tornado in Brown County, Minnesota

Tornado May 11, 2022 · Brown County, Minnesota

EF0
Rating
1.5 mi
Path length
50 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 50 yards (0.03 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

The tornado hit several groves of trees and damaged a farm. Portions of roofs from three outbuildings were torn off. Maximum winds were estimated at 80 mph.

The wider storm

A cluster of storms produced large hail stones west of Granite Falls, near Olivia, and northeast toward the northwest suburbs of the Twin Cities. Most of these storms were elevated but had a steep lapse rate to generate large hail, up to 2 inches in diameter at times.

These late morning, and early afternoon storms moved northeast out of Minnesota. A warm front lifted northward across southern Minnesota during the afternoon with a potent shortwave moving northeast out of Nebraska. This shortwave generated a large complex of storms and quickly moved northeast across southern Minnesota and produced numerous damaging wind gusts, tornadoes and hail. There were even some flooding concerns as three to five inches of rain fell across portions of west central and central Minnesota by the late evening as the storms diminished and moved off to the northeast.

Three tornadoes occurred within the large bow echo that surged from southwest Minnesota, northeast toward east central Minnesota. One occurred in Brown County, another in Sibley and Carver County, and a third in Anoka County. All of the tornadoes were rated EF0 and produced mainly tree and roof damage.

According to Xcel Energy, more than 75,000 customers were without power across southern Minnesota during the peak of the storm.

Began near Searles (44.2215, -94.4585).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

2 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1019669. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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