The National Weather Service (NWS) in Grand Forks, ND has officially upgraded the June 20, 2025 Enderlin, North Dakota tornado to EF-5, with estimated peak winds exceeding 210 mph. This announcement ends a 12-year stretch without a confirmed EF-5 (or F5) tornado in the U.S.. the longest such interval on record and dubbed the "EF-5 Drought".
Since the EF-5 tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma on May 20, 2013, the United States had not documented another tornado reaching the extreme intensity category. That drought has now ended, thanks to enhanced damage surveys and forensic wind analysis in Enderlin, ND.
The revised assessment cites several high-end damage indicators: tipping fully loaded grain hopper cars, lofting tanker cars distances of 475 ft (145 m), total destruction of a farmstead with debris swept clean, and severe “sandpapering” (debarking) of trees near the Maple River.
The tornado’s path: 12.10 miles long and up to 1.05 miles wide (1850 yards).
According to the NWS release, lack of proper anchoring at the farmstead limited the rating severity in that location.
The upgrade was made after collaboration with wind damage experts and the Northern Tornadoes Project, reanalyzing damage indicators and radar-derived velocity data.
Why It Matters: The “EF-5 Drought”
EF-5 tornadoes are extraordinarily rare. As of 2025, the Moore 2013 event stood as the most recent U.S. representative, and for 12 years, no other storm had met the threshold.
That 12-year span is the longest such interval between confirmed “5”-level storms in the modern record (dating to ~1950).
Before Moore 2013, the previous F5/EF5 event was the Bridge Creek–Moore tornado of May 3, 1999.
How Tornadoes Are Rated (EF Scale)
The Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale (in use since 2007 in the U.S.) rates tornadoes not by direct wind measurements but by the damage they cause, using damage indicators (building types, trees, structures) and degrees of damage to infer wind speeds.
*These are wind estimates inferred from damage — actual winds may vary, especially in sparsely built areas.
Because the scale is based on damage, some high-wind tornadoes may be “underrated” if they pass over open fields or weak structures with little to damage.
For the Enderlin upgrade, investigators matched damage features to known indicators, combined with radar velocity data, and re-evaluated tree and structural damage patterns to justify raising the rating.
Here is a look at the Public Information Statement released by the NWS:
