EF5 tornado that killed 3 in North Dakota was the nation’s first in 12 years
MGN
A deadly tornado that tore across southeastern North Dakota this summer has been upgraded to an EF5 with winds topping 200 mph (322 kph), the strongest classification of tornado and the first on American soil in 12 years, meteorologists said Monday.
The June 20 twister in Enderlin caused significant damage and killed three people. At its largest, the tornado was 1.05 miles wide (1.69 kilometers) and carved a path across the prairie for just over 12 miles (19 kilometers).
Meteorologists from the National Weather Service office in Grand Forks estimated the tornado’s winds reached 210 mph (338 kph), according to the newly released analysis. The 1999 Bridge Creek-Moore tornado in Oklahoma holds the record of the strongest winds ever recorded at 321 mph (517 kph).
Since the National Weather Service began using Enhanced Fujita scale in 2007, there have been 10 tornadoes categorized as EF5.
“In the last kind of 12 years, there’s been several strong tornadoes that have come close, but there haven’t been known damage indicators at that time to support the EF5 rating,” said Melinda Beerends, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Grand Forks. “It’s hard sometimes to get tornadoes to hit something.”
The twister destroyed farmsteads, tipped over fully-loaded rail cars, toppled transmission towers and uprooted trees. One tanker car was hurled far from the rest.
Meteorologists from the Grand Forks office headed into the field the next morning to assess the damage. Determining a tornado’s strength usually takes days or weeks, as meteorologists study the damage to buildings and trees. This case took much longer because of the unusual damage to rail cars.
The initial estimate for the tornado in the days afterward was an EF3.
The tornado was caused by warm, moist air in place which is ripe for a thunderstorm, Beerends said. But there was also a high amount of wind shear, which is a variation of wind speed and direction that created the conditions for the tornado.
Two men and a woman were killed at two locations near Enderlin, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Fargo. Thousands of homes lost power during the storm.
One farmstead had its foundation swept clean, with just the basement remaining and debris scattered downwind.
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