EF3 Tornado — Freeborn, Minnesota

2010-06-17 · near (ael)albert Lea Arpt, Freeborn, Minnesota

Event narrative

Touchdown was near the intersection of Freeborn County Roads 14 and 20. Multiple farmsteads experienced significant structural and tree damage, including one house completely destroyed and several others heavily damaged. Many outbuildings were destroyed, hundreds of trees uprooted and snapped, with some partially debarked. It then moved into Steele County, southwest of Ellendale, where it began moving to the north-northwest.

Wider weather episode

Several strong storms developed in west-central Minnesota during the mid afternoon hours of June 17th.

These storms quickly become severe and produced softball size hail northwest of Alexandria and a tornado near Leaf Valley that became the EF-4 that moved through Wadena, Minnesota.

By the late afternoon, numerous thunderstorms developed across southern Minnesota along the leading edge of extreme instability.

Numerous funnel cloud reports and a few brief tornado touchdowns were noted prior to 5 pm, but once the low level shear (0-1 km) increased significantly from 15 knots, to over 35 knots, strong tornadoes developed along the Iowa border.

These storms along the Iowa border produced a series of long-lived tornadoes near Albert Lea, Minnesota. Very large hail also accompanied some tornadoes along with flash flooding.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (43.7020, -93.4188)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 238619. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.