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EF0 tornado in Chippewa County, Minnesota

Tornado May 15, 2025 · Chippewa County, Minnesota

EF0

Rating

4.0 mi

Path length

25 yd

Path width

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 25 yards (0.01 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

Video from a storm chaser showed ground circulation at first but then the tornado became fully condensed. It mostly moved across open fields, but the tornado did hit some groves of trees, knocking down large branches. It hit one farm and took some tin off a shed and was rated an EF-0. The estimated maximum wind speed with this tornado was 75 mph.

The wider storm

A very strong low pressure system produced storms on Thursday, May 15th, 2025 across the Upper Midwest. Two main areas of storms formed across south and west central Minnesota during the early afternoon.

One line of storms formed over west central Minnesota, producing a few tornadoes in Chippewa, Swift, and western Stearns counties. Another line of storms had many rotating wall clouds reported over south central Minnesota and into the Twin Cities metro.

Began near Hagen (45.0860, -95.7090).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF1 Swift County EF0 Swift County EF0 Stearns County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1260590. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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