The last EF5 tornado that occurred in the United States took place May 20, 2013, in Moore, Oklahoma… until June 20, 2025 in North Dakota.
That tornado flattened a couple homes, and killed three people near Enderlin.
Blake Rafferty is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Forks. The final rating was issued today (Monday), after months of analysis. Rafferty says tornadoes of this size and strength are extremely rare.
"The environment has to be extremely favorable for a tornado like this to develop, you need a lot of instability. You need something called wind sheer, which is a changing of the wind speed or direction, with height, or both in some cases. This tornado had a very prime environment ahead of the derecho to interact with. On top of that, the last tornado to be rated an EF5 in North Dakota was on June 20, 1957. That was the Fargo F5 tornado. So it's been a long time here in the state of North Dakota since we've had a tornado rated F5, or EF5."
Preliminary ratings for the twister came in at EF3. Rafferty says the specific damage that led to the EF5 rating ended up being a train that was derailed off its tracks. He says multiple teams looked at all aspects of the damage.
"Was the train car full, was it empty, what can it withstand, what materials are it made of, etcetera - that's what took a while to determine. But after spending several months analyzing it, it was found to have needed winds of at least 210 miles per hour to cause this kind of damage. There were several train cars pulled off the track, but there was one in particular that was lifted up, and it wasn't drug - it was dropped, in the field. That was what was used to determine that it was EF5 intensity at that point during the tornado's life span."
That empty train car was tossed over 475 feet, or 145 meters from the tracks.
The tornado took place during a particularly volatile day and night, where the final threat level was forecast at a four out of five. A derecho also traveled nearly the entire length of the state, clipping the Enderlin tornado before it could travel any further.