Greg Gust of the National Weather Service Provides Analysis of Explosive Tornado Activity in Otter Tail County: A Wild Ride

OTTER TAIL COUNTY, MN (trfnews.i234.me) Take a wild ride with storm chaser, Michael Marz of St. Paul as he captures dramatic video of the Otter Tail County tornadoes this week and Greg Gust of the National Weather Service in Grand Forks gives analysis of what happened.
no person here on the phone with me Greg Gus the National Weather Service in Grand Forks talking about all those tornados down in the otter kale area I understand you took a look I’d like there was more than one was it well first of all there were ones in the morning and that’s from the downburst winds squall line with embedded tornadoes that occurred in the wee hours of the morning so that so you had tornado tracks embedded in squall lines over what we call quasi linear convective system so generally in the ef-1 a little bit of approaching you have to damage to some power lines and stuff by henning most of the damage North Otter Tail Lake and and actually west from there between say east of Elizabeth and up toward theirs is still pretty much in the ef-1 scale range but somewhere so that’s one two possibly three week tornado segments embedded in that well how fast are winds in that scale up long ago you do have to ask that don’t you oh let me see so the EF one scale covers winds up to and I am turning the page on my piece of paper right in front of me that our winds up to a hundred and ten so you have to indicate stronger than 110 so typically when you’re getting power poles and the clear snapping you know you’re starting to push up toward that mix and the big stuff gain in the afternoon and the big stuff was in the afternoon so we went from squall line with embedded tornadoes in the morning to then having the big power hog supercell so a squall line big lines of thunderstorms big footprints of damage over a broad area but these super cells are actually much smaller but much more intense and so those are the ones that produce be more sustained and usually stronger and more deadly tornadic type things if they if and when they produce that so that’s that’s what we had in the afternoon and of course a beautiful cell from all the meteorologist and storm chaser world because you could see it out in the clear it was one stink storm it didn’t have a lot of other stuff around it so wide open visibility but just again devastating in his path so there you go what one of the would you say one of the biggest tornadoes on there’s the yes so three so I we actually ended up rating it as an ef-4 and I just sent that info out officially here just a little bit ago and of course part of the process that we use when we get potentially greater than EF three is we we activate other wind experts around the country to weigh in on things so that we get a consensus of opinion so that we’re using uniform standards across the country and so we had people in Omaha and Boulder or as Mike but you know various parts of the country that were weighing in on different areas of expertise to help and the last thing here then I guess how fast is EF Ford how big or we rated it conservatively and I’ll say use that or we conservatively with winds 170 miles an hour and yellow or range is 166 to 200 and so but there’s still there’s there’s variance of opinion on those of us and the team as to how strong it really was but one thing with you know he kind of kind of came up come up with a consensus of opinion there and one thing is we it’s rural you really they it’s the the clinic is homestead that God you know that house is off the foundation and decimated in the distance okay and it was well built built to code so plates walls two-story house bolted down to the concrete block foundation but still the bolts are all there in the sill plate and house and everything got torn right off and literally fragments off in the distance not not the houses off in a pile right here it’s it’s obliterated and spread out over you know a square mile all right well not that we don’t get tornados and quite often but nothing that strong at least we don’t know and that’s why you know one of the difficulties in the rural areas of course is the material in this case you you don’t have too many of those things that are that strong you know your typical pol at a farmstead you know that’s to del you know we had one of those that was damaged by the start destroyed by this it’s still on the ef-2 because of the nature of the structure that’s all it takes the machine shed even though it’s a well built machine stead with a steel infrastructure it’s on a concrete slab big open doors big open space ef3 to the multiple max so then you have then you have to look at all the other things trees the big vehicles and all this kind of stuff and try to see if any of that indicates that higher wind potential and so so all those things kind of get a look over in and we end up with a best estimate based on available information which in this case is somewhat limited but still the best we can get through with that all right thanks for talking I see if you get a little stormy weather coming up this weekend but hopefully nothing that well hopefully you know and I get to work lovely evening shifts so I’ll be watching that up close and personal again and we’ll see how that goes but yeah it’s uh we had a couple of days a break and I still have to see if I can get home and mow my lawn yet today and those will carry me away or what’s gonna happen all right okay thanks for talking to me have a good weekend you too take care new all right later