Enderlin EF5 Timeline + My thoughts

The Enderlin, ND Tornado of June 20, 2025 was on a day not expected to even have tornados. The national weather service was predicting and preparing for a "Regular" summertime Derecho. at first only having a 3/5 enhanced risk and later that night upgrading to a 4/5 but it was based on wind damage and the projected derecho, But the environment was so unstable and intense like a match soaked in gasoline that if anything formed in front of said derecho it would have the chance to have an horrific outcome. The event started around 8PM with a small line of storms firing by north Dakotas western border as the time passed it would go to bow out becoming whats known as a bow echo derecho with 90-110 sometimes even 120 Mph straight line damaging winds. Around 9 Pm the first sign of disaster would show when 2 small storms fired off about 150 miles ahead of the derecho taking complete advantage of the powder keg atmosphere (Brad Arnold Sounding For Enderlin) and in just 30 minutes they both showed signs of being supercelluar and producing their first tornados by 10pm with the derecho now in full effect producing 110 mph winds just 100 miles behind the 2 discrete supercells. The cells started to gain strength the closer the derecho came with the local weather service announcing their first tornado emergency of the night around 11pm and would go on until the bottom cell merged with the northern cell which they would finish their merger just about at 12am the morning of the 21st with the derecho just lagging behind by 30 miles. And as they completed the merger with the derecho on its tail at 12:06 the tornado formed by the 2 merged storms boosted by the influence of the derecho and violent atmosphere would almost immediately cause EF5 damage derailing and dragging multiple full 200 thousand pound freight train car full of grain and some 78 thousand pound empty ones with a total of 33 carts being moved 19 full 14 empty. One of the tornados most impressive feats was lofting and throwing an empty car about 450 feet away from the closest car it was connected too.

"Collaboration with the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University’s Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory estimated a potential wind speed of >119 m/s (>266 mph) to loft the empty tanker car 475.7 ft (145 m) using similar calculations performed in Estimating Wind Speeds in Tornadoes Using Debris Trajectories of Large Compact Objects (Miller et al. 2024). The study, published in the Monthly Weather Review, found that large compact objects lofted greater than 50 m indicate EF-5 intensity winds (greater than 200 mph). The Enderlin train cars were nearly 2× farther than the EF-5 threshold distance and ~4× heavier than the heaviest object modeled in the study." - Per the information on the damage assessment toolkit

The tornadic storms would quickly be overtaken by the derecho by 12:30 but by then the damage was more than done. on a day not expected to even have tornados, the infamous EF5 drought, the longest EF5 drought in history, was ended for the first time in 12 years since the 2013 Moore Oklahoma EF5 in one of the rarest situations nature has seen with an incredibly strong derecho having prefrontal supercells ahead of it even one causing an EF5 tornado bringing incredible devastation to the Eastern North Dakota community that will lead to people calling for more research, and towards more tornados being reviewed again some names being Vilonia Arkansas 2014, Greenfield Iowa 2024, Mayfield Kentucky 2021, Rolling Fork Mississippi 2023, many of which have contextual damage that could possibly be considered for an upgraded rating on the enhanced Fujita scale.

As of today October 6th 2025 when this information was released I'm still at shock this happened, for the past 4 months the tornado was rated at just an EF3 with 160 miles per hour winds which personally i feel should lead to more questions being asked about more tornados of the past because important data can be and was missed so reservying is always important especially when its time to set precedent for storm shelters, building codes and even future analogs of potential weather setups. The ability to compare a possible future scenario to the outcome of a past scenario is always a helpful piece of information to forecasters day by day especially in the peaks of the tornado season. Due to events of March 14th, March 15th, April 2nd, May 16th, June 20/21th all being major tornado days with this year tallying up 5 EF4's and 1 EF5. The year of 2025 will be set in weather history for a very long time coming. (All Times above in EST, Tornado Happened in CST -1 Hour to make sense of graphic under)