13 tornadoes touched down in Wisconsin in one day in June. Here's the latest on the damage and what was behind the 'unusual' weather
The final numbers are in and 13 tornadoes touched down in Wisconsin on June 15 — not the most ever but certainly an unusually high number of twisters for one day in the Badger state, according to forecasters.
"Having 13 in one day is well above average," said Cameron Miller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sullivan. "Considering June's average is six tornadoes (in Wisconsin,) it's a little bit unusual."
Two of the tornadoes were considered EF2 on the tornado damage scale. The other 11 were rated EF1. The scale ranges from EF0 to EF5.
"This brings the 2022 total up to 20 tornadoes in Wisconsin," the weather service said.
The average for a full year in Wisconsin is 23 tornadoes.
Here's a recap of the June 15 storms:
Tornado takes out fire station, trucks
Chief Alan Walesh and the firefighters who make up the Silver Cliff Volunteer Fire Department in Marinette County didn't have to go far to find tornado damage on June 15.
One of the EF2 tornadoes that day — it had winds estimated at 112 mph — clobbered Silver Cliff's firehouse. "Our building is pretty much a total loss," Walesh said.
Three fire trucks were damaged, with two of them — an engine and a tanker/pumper — having to be taken out of service for repairs.
"The windshields were shattered in the two mainline engines," Walesh said. Emergency lights on the trucks were also destroyed.
The tornado sent the overhead doors on the building crashing onto the trucks, Walesh said.
There were no injuries as a result of the tornado, but there was damage to several businesses and a couple of homes in the town, Walesh said.
The department's firefighters and emergency medical technicians headed out to check for damage and injuries after the storm.
"The few trucks that we had leftover are what we used" to respond, he said. Neighboring towns also sent help.
The tornado was on the ground for 1.9 miles. It had a damage path that was 275 yards wide, according to the weather service.
In addition to damaging buildings, the tornado flattened, snapped or uprooted hundreds of trees in the heavily-forested region.
New windshields were being installed in the damaged fire engines on Thursday.
"I had never been through a tornado — and I don't ever want to again," Walesh said.
Air masses clash
All of the ingredients for tornadoes were present on June 15 as a cold front came crashing into a warm, moist, unstable airmass with winds veering in different directions and at different speeds throughout various levels of the atmosphere, a phenomenon known as wind shear.
The instability in the atmosphere over Wisconsin that day was exceedingly high for this part of the country and is typically seen on the Plains — places like Oklahoma and Kansas — during severe weather outbreaks, Miller said.
"What was initially a hail and wind threat turned to tornadoes in west-central Wisconsin," the weather service said in a statement.
Tornadoes and severe straight-line winds, some estimated as high as 105 mph, "created a swath of wind damage that extended from northeast Iowa all the way into northeast Wisconsin."
As the storms moved into southeastern Wisconsin they dropped torrential rainfall, leading to flash flooding in some areas.
'People took cover'
Besides 13 tornadoes, the other statistics that stand out are zero deaths and zero injuries from the storms.
The weather service issued 64 tornado warnings across Wisconsin on June 15.
That doesn't mean there were 64 tornadoes in the state. Specific storms may have generated multiple tornado warnings as they crossed county lines.
Also, Doppler radar may have detected wind circulations that often lead to tornadoes and prompted a tornado warning, even if no tornado materialized.
A tornado watch was in effect for almost the entire state on June 15.
"People took notice," Miller said. "People took cover and people took heed of those warnings."
Forecasters had warned several days in advance that severe weather was possible on June 15 and "People paid attention," Miller said.
Biggest tornado on June 15
The largest of the 13 tornadoes was in Monroe County and began near Tomah and ended in the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. (The tornado spun up just to the south and west of where I-90/94 split, with I-90 continuing west and I-94 continuing north.)
The tornado was on the ground for nearly 40 minutes, traveled 23.5 miles and had wind speeds estimated at 115 mph. It was 250 yards wide, but violent winds surrounding the tornado caused sporadic damage as far out as 1,000 yards on either side of the tornado's track, the weather service said.
The tornado was rated an EF2 on a scale of EF0 to EF5.
Where the tornadoes touched down
A total of 11 EF1 tornadoes touched down in Wisconsin on June 15. Here's the list:
LaFarge in Juneau County
Mauston in Juneau County
Wittenberg in Shawano County
Bowler in Shawano County
West Bloomfield in Waushara County
Manawa in Waupaca County
Navarino in Shawano and Outagamie counties
Seymour in Outagamie County
Middle Inlet in Marinette County
Amberg in Marinette County
Pembine in Marinette County
2005 saw the most tornadoes in a single day in Wisconsin
The most tornadoes in a single day in Wisconsin occurred on Aug. 18, 2005, when 27 tornadoes touched down in the state. The most significant of those tornadoes devastated the city of Stoughton, Wisconsin.
Prior to 2005, a total of 24 tornadoes touched down in the state on May 8, 1988.
Last year, there were 17 tornadoes in Wisconsin from the evening of July 28 into the early morning hours of July 29.
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Contact Joe Taschler at (414) 224-2554 or jtaschler@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeTaschler or Facebook at facebook.com/joe.taschler.1.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 13 tornadoes caused damage across Wisconsin on June 15
