EF1 tornado in Dane County, Wisconsin

A brief EF1 tornado spun up within the city of Cross Plains between Julius Street and Sylvia Pine Way and moved northeast to near the intersection of Caesar Street and Woodside Drive and dissipated. At least 3 homes had minor roof damage. A number of large trees were uprooted or broken in half. An in-ground basketball pole was bent to a 45 degree angle. Roof soffit and fascia siding was peeled off a municipal pool house. The severe thunderstorm become outflow dominated and resulted in straight line wind damage (trees) further northeast over rural areas northeast Cross Plains. some crop damage was seen, but loss estimates were unavailable. The exact start location was Lat. 43.114895 Lon. -89.647946. The exact end location was Lat. 43.11522 Lon. -89.645138. The EF-rating was based on DI 2 (TH), DOD 4 which suggests wind speeds between 90 and 100 mph. Average path width was 20 yards.

Strong to severe thunderstorms developed across much of south central and southeast Wisconsin during the evening of June 21, 2010. A vigorous upper level disturbance helped to support deep vertical motions in the atmosphere, along with strong deep layer wind shear. This lift acted on a warm and very moist atmosphere, carried into the region on a 40 to 50 knot low-level jet. The result was powerful rotating thunderstorms, with damaging straight line winds, large hail, and in this case, 5 tornadoes. At one point during the height of the event, around 48,000 customers in southeast Wisconsin were without electric power due to downed power lines. However, power-line and power-pole loss estimates were not available and do not show up as damage amounts in any individual event within this severe weather episode.