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EF0 tornado in Stearns County, Minnesota

Tornado September 19, 2017 · Stearns County, Minnesota

EF0
Rating
1.2 mi
Path length
330 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 330 yards (0.19 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

A tornado knocked down several dozen trees, with some landing on cars and sheds. One tree landed on a mobile home. The tornado also destroyed a storage building (the building had been moved from another location and was still in the process of being made ready for business when the tornado came and blew it across the road).

The wider storm

A strong and potent upper level disturbance, combined with a cold front sweeping across the eastern Dakotas, fired a line of severe thunderstorms that moved eastward into western Minnesota toward midnight. This line of storms continued to progress east-northeast across southern and central Minnesota, which produced fast-moving tornadoes, severe measured wind gusts, and hail as large as tennis balls. This line slowly weakened as it moved into far eastern Minnesota, with general, non-severe thunderstorms as the line progressed into west central Wisconsin after 3 am.

Began near Belgrade (45.4528, -95.0090).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 716501. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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