EF0 tornado in Steele County, Minnesota

Tornado June 17, 2010 · Steele County, Minnesota

EF0

Rating

5.5 mi

Whole path

50 yd

Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Steele County → Dodge County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

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

This tornado moved north-northeast and caused minor damage to outbuildings and broke several dozen trees. It exited Steele County about 3/4 mile south of Steele County Road 26 and continued into Dodge County.

The wider storm

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.

Began near Blooming Prairie (43.8965, -93.0529).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 238660. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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