June tornado in North Dakota is now the first EF5 in 12 years

More than three months after a violent tornado struck North Dakota out ahead of a derecho the same night, the event has been given the first EF5 rating in 12 years. The way it came together is novel but it’s hard to argue with the result.

Weather watch

Future Jerry. Expected to develop into Jerry, a disturbance in the eastern Atlantic still has a long way to go to be much. Weather models have backed off some of the stronger solutions in the past day or so, now generally featuring a weaker system north of the Antilles in a couple days. The American GFS continues to spit out a powerful storm in recent runs, so there’s still much to be determined here.

Heavy rain threat. A cold front cutting through the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys toward the Appalachians on Tuesday will have rather abundant moisture to work with, especially for October. It could squeeze out some heavy rainfall, on the order of up to 2-to-4 inches in spots, possibly leading to scattered flash flooding.

From hot to cold. Places that were witnessing record heat over the weekend are under frost and freeze alerts in the Upper Midwest and surrounding areas. Temperatures are forecast to dip into the 20s and 30s Tuesday night across large portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Lightning links

Tropical wind and rainstorm to threaten East Coast with beach erosion, flooding rain. (Courtney Travis, AccuWeather)

First EF5 since 2013!

I was a little confused by the notice given the generally nice weather — an EF5 was confirmed Monday for a tornado in North Dakota. The tornado happened on June 20.

A Friday night tornado, it was briefly covered here. I made an animated radar loop of the event at the time. I also trolled chasers saying it wouldn’t be a five.

Oops on the last one.

The twister ended the longest stretch on record without a tornado of the highest rating in the United States at 4,415 days. Prior to the June 20 event, the most recent EF5 occurred in Moore on May 20, 2013 (side note: I was out storm chasing that day but chose a different target in southwest Oklahoma.)

From the survey update:

“The estimated maximum wind speed of the Enderlin, ND tornado #1 is greater than 210 mph and occurred during the time of the train derailment south of Enderlin, ND. The analysis involved forensic damage wind speed estimates for tipping several fully-loaded grain hopper cars and lofting of tanker cars, including one empty tanker car that was tossed about 475.7 ft (145 m).”

A press release by Canada’s Northern Tornadoes Project offers more details:

“To estimate the wind speeds required to cause this level of displacement, experts applied findings from a peer-reviewed study led by Miller, published in the journal Monthly Weather Review in 2024, titled “Estimating Wind Speeds in Tornadoes Using Debris Trajectories of Large Compact Objects” (https://doi.org/10.1175/MWR-D-23-0251.1).”

It continued…

“Calculations on the Enderlin train car confirmed wind speeds well exceeding the EF5 threshold. These findings were instrumental in confirming the tornado’s EF5 rating, despite the absence of traditional EF-scale damage indicators.”

While I overall applaud using modern science to better rate tornadoes — why has it taken so long?! — it is a little curious that NWS went along with this kind of rating.

In the past, the U.S. government has been extremely conservative on this issue, even taking away ratings based on advanced technology. Then again this is arguably different than basing a rating on mobile doppler radar which are not surface observations. Instead, this is something of an enhanced damage indicator system.

Nonetheless, moving the tornado from a high-end EF3 to among the most powerful EF5s on record reopens questions about broad under-ranking of strong tornadoes given that many do not hit enough, or the proper damage indicators, to garner the ranking they deserve.

Should this technique gain widespread usage it seems likely that this 12-year stretch without a confirmed EF5 will probably remain the longest on record for good. Why? Simply put more tornadoes will end up with the strongest ratings than when using the EF-scale as it has been since inception.

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Weekday morning newsletter by a journalist/forecaster. Connecting weather and climate change dots while occasionally stirring the pot.

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