GRAND MOUND, Wash. — A brief, weak tornado touched down Friday afternoon in Thurston County.
The National Weather Service said video sent to them by residents showed the cloud touchdown in a field southeast of Grand Mound, south of the Tenino Grand Mound Road.
It happened at about 2 p.m.
There were no reports of injuries or damage as a result of the tornado, so The National Weather Service did not send out a survey crew.
The tornado was ranked as an “EF-U” by The National Weather Service.
An EF-U rating means that a tornado was given a rating of unknown strength. That’s because tornados are rated based on the damage they cause, but in this case, there was no damage reported.
This tornado had a width of less than 50-feet, a path length of less than 100-feet, and it touched down for less than a minute with an unknown peak wind, according to The National Weather Service.
The National Weather Service said their radars at the time indicated a weak rotation on the storm.
“This is not uncommon, and the vast majority of weakly rotating storms do not produce a tornado,” said The National Weather Service in a release Friday.
No warning ever went into effect for this tornado because there was never any conclusive evidence from the radar that a tornado was occurring, and videos from residents didn’t come into The National Weather Service until well after the event was over.
The National Weather Service urges people who witness a weather event to send footage to them.
by KING staff (2019, Oct 4)
