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Weakest Tornado You've Ever Documented

Dean Baron

Dean Baron

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Joined
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573
Location
Minneapolis, MN
I meant to post this thread last winter to help with the offseason boredom but I forgot so I am posting it now before I forget again. I managed to document what I believe one of the weakest tornadoes ever on July 8, 2020 in central Minnnesota. This was the same day as the Dalton/Ashby EF4 but after that tornado lifted. I can't remember if it was the same storm that produced the EF4 or a different one but either way, it wasn't far from where the violent tornado had just occurred. This one occurred near Vining, MN. The wall cloud was spinning pretty good and it seemed like another decent tornado was imminent. Unfortunately, the best it could muster up was a very weak, brief, partially condensed tornado before the wall cloud fell apart. See the video I have of it so you can see how pathetic it was. It got me thinking, what's the weakest tornado you've ever documented?
 
August 8, 2021, near Coloma, WI. - A line of storms moved north/northeast and was severe warned. There had been weak rotation on radar, so I was going to punch through the line and get to the south to see what was up. Through the heavy rainfall, I could just make out whispy cloud curtains wrapped around to my south. That's when I noticed my phone's connection had lagged out. Driving south on I-39 into suddenly heavier rain, the wind picked up and was arcing up from the south and turning west, really pushing my car around. About this time, I noticed my ears were about to pop, which was the final clue that something was very wrong.

I don't recall a warning, but an EF1 tornado had touched down just off to the south. The tornado "lifted," and I have that in quotes because myself and several others mistakenly drove through the west side of a noticeable ground circulation as it moved north/northeast over the highway just south of a weigh station. The dashcam was able to pick out a couple cloud strands whisking across the highway before everything went quiet for a split second, and then the activity moved on past, pulling hard to the left as it moved on. If one would consider it a tornado, it would have to be one of the weakest. The official NWS track shows it lifted just to the south, so even though it wasn't officially a tornado at the point, I figured it could make the list, or at least be an interesting story. I felt ashamed to get into that position in the first place but was thankful to finish the day without further incident. Here's a link to the specific dashcam clip. Event is right at the 12 second mark.

Damage Path.png
 
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I've seen a lot of very brief and/or very weak tornadoes. I've driven through 4 of them (not intentionally). One was the May 21, 2011 Emporia/Reading KS tornado as it was just developing as I drove down I-35 into Emporia. The wind blew like hell one direction, then the other direction, and a few seconds later it was fully condensed to the ground.

Another happened during the June 4, 2015 Simla CO event when I drove through the just-developing anti-cyclonic tornado while watching the cyclonic one. June 16, 2010 I was parked on the western edge of the Dupree SD storm, unable to get into a good position on the storm (which produced a number of tornadoes that I missed) when I found myself in rotating debris. I looked straight up through my windshield at a rotating cone right above me. I left that spot. Quickly.
 
Bob Schafer said:
June 16, 2010 I was parked on the western edge of the Dupree SD storm, unable to get into a good position on the storm (which produced a number of tornadoes that I missed) when I found myself in rotating debris. I looked straight up through my windshield at a rotating cone right above me. I left that spot. Quickly.
Click to expand...

A bit off topic from the point of the thread but that Dupree storm is quietly one of the most underrated storms I know of. A tornado machine that is not well known and is rarely talked about. Unfortunately I got on it too late and flooding made it impossible to navigate.
 
Yea... I had to walk a little ways to get home too because I called for help but, no one was there. And then when I came home my parents weren't home so I waited for like 5-10 minutes.
 
Both of mine were in the Texas Panhandle oddly enough:

October 12, 2012 outside of Hale Center. Barely condensed into this broken, wispy rope and I think it did EF0 damage to an outbuilding or something of that nature in the 45 seconds it was on the ground.

March 13, 2021 bird fart just outside of Silverton while the Happy storm was going through Palo Duro way off to the north. Traversing into the canyonlands off the Llano on TX-256 put us behind the eight ball to have a chance to get a peek at the murky tornado that the same storm produced going into Clarendon. I don't even know if Lubbock ever located any damage/bothered surveying this one.
 
The recent Los Angeles event with the low top storm might take the cake along with ā€œweakest documented supercellā€
 
Two stick out to me:

2008-05-25 near Dighton, Kansas. A very brief spin-up beneath a truncated rope, both of which escaped my detection and were only noticed upon reviewing video.

2010-05-10 somewhere along Hwy. 64 near Medford, Oklahoma. I strayed too long under the developing cell just SW of Alva, mesmerized by the tantalizing motions at the base. My favorite part of chasing is to witness a cell on the verge of tornadogenesis followed by the subsequent birth of the tornado. The inflow was robust, rotation was evident, it was a picture of beautyā€¦but it wasnā€™t ready yet and with the fast storm motion I realized I needed to get moving. Instead of skirting around Alva I made the idiot decision to go through town and that doomed my tornado chances as the town was shellacked from large hail and I could only creep through. Once I made it to 64 I was able to blast east, hoping I could catch up in time to catch a tornado or three. Then I saw the damage, a few outbuildings took a hit and then the telephone poles along the north side of 64, one after another either snapped in half or blown downā€¦at first all in the same direction so maybe RFDā€¦but noā€¦now a bunch snapped or blown down in the opposite direction. A tornado had likely just torn through and if I would have skirted south of Alva I would have been in a great position to see it but I missed it and now I was hell-bent on catching up. That cell was moving fast but after a lengthy pursuit I was able to slice the hook and my spirits rose as I saw a tornado was just about to occur. Watching the video of what happened next is comical, my cam was already filming but it was filming my progress of getting out of the vehicle, grabbing my tripod, and then the ground bouncing up and down as I ran to get into position, me swearing as I was by now seeing a tornado but not able to get my shit together in time to film it and in a snap the tornado was over. More swearingā€¦what a putz! Yeah, it counts as a tornado but to date it goes down as the least rewarding tornado Iā€™ve ever seen and also one of the weakest Iā€™m sure. The one redeeming factor was that time spent under the maturing updraft, that still remains a top storm memory and saved the chase from being a 1700 mile High Risk failure. Oh, and seeing Tom Skilling out there bagging his first tornado was pretty cool too!
 
Oh that's easy for me to pick out. 10/21/17. One of the few times I didn't chase solo. Adam and I saw a couple landspouts earlier in the day, and then saw a very short lived birdfart near Indiahoma, OK. That day saved me from a goose egg for that year. We were not able to catch a glimpse of the tornado that I believe was near Cyril or somewhere in that general vicinity. But that was definitely my weakest and shortest lived tornado.
 
Dean Baron said:
I meant to post this thread last winter to help with the offseason boredom but I forgot so I am posting it now before I forget again. I managed to document what I believe one of the weakest tornadoes ever on July 8, 2020 in central Minnnesota. This was the same day as the Dalton/Ashby EF4 but after that tornado lifted. I can't remember if it was the same storm that produced the EF4 or a different one but either way, it wasn't far from where the violent tornado had just occurred. This one occurred near Vining, MN. The wall cloud was spinning pretty good and it seemed like another decent tornado was imminent. Unfortunately, the best it could muster up was a very weak, brief, partially condensed tornado before the wall cloud fell apart. See the video I have of it so you can see how pathetic it was. It got me thinking, what's the weakest tornado you've ever documented?
Click to expand...

I hadn't been able to think of a good entry for myself until I saw Dean's video. I present my competing argument here:

It does have an entry in NCEI's storm events database: Storm Events Database - Event Details | National Centers for Environmental Information
 
You are probably thinking of this thread

Smallest Tornado Ever?

On this outbreak day many of us are watching with earnest as the storms develop in chase territory. As I perused the SPC storm report page I found the following report out of TX: TORNADO WAS REPORTED BY A STORM CHASER 1 MILE NORTHEAST OF SILVERTON. IT WAS 1/8 IN DIAMETER. (LUB) I thought to...
stormtrack.org

I don't know if this tornado would qualify as weak or not:
www.facebook.com

Town of Maine tornado | WOW! Check out this amazing video of last night's tornado. Antonio Hernandez took this in the town of Maine in Outagamie County where the tornado touched... | By WLUK-TV FOX 11Facebook

WOW! Check out this amazing video of last night's tornado. Antonio Hernandez took this in the town of Maine in Outagamie County where the tornado touched...
www.facebook.com www.facebook.com

It is quite beckoning....inviting
 
It doesn't look weak to me. Impressive one-cell structure for sure!
 
If I might digress a momentā€¦you can have small vortices that are actually quite strong.

I was watching the Starship/SuperHeavy launch at Boca on 4/20/2023, where the pad eroded and huge chunks of concrete lifted:

This might be PERFECT for Tim Marshallā€™s Haigā€¦also in Texasā€¦or the Texas Tech guys to examine before repairā€¦Musk having described a ā€œrock tornado.ā€

This is a rare opportunity to study the effects of destructive flows.
 
Jeff Wright said:
If I might digress a momentā€¦you can have small vortices that are actually quite strong.

I was watching the Starship/SuperHeavy launch at Boca on 4/20/2023, where the pad eroded and huge chunks of concrete lifted:

This might be PERFECT for Tim Marshallā€™s Haigā€¦also in Texasā€¦or the Texas Tech guys to examine before repairā€¦Musk having described a ā€œrock tornado.ā€

This is a rare opportunity to study the effects of destructive flows.
Click to expand...

Staff note
This post is off-topic, but I will let it stand for now. Any replies to this specific post or continuations along this topic will be removed with prejudice, though.
 
Back to the regularly scheduled topic.

Who's the cutest little EF-0?

You are:
bwdweather.blogspot.com

Nevada Tornado Takes a Stroll Down the Street (Video)

This was a pretty cool video that appeared on YouTube this week. An EF-0 tornado almost appears out of no where and moves down the si...
bwdweather.blogspot.com bwdweather.blogspot.com

Mom can we keep him? I promise to feed him the proper Lapse rates and everything.

On second thought, Dad would just dump him out on the road once he gets too big:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1656082719112310787
 
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