As least two tornadoes touched down in Wisconsin on Tuesday, April 14, causing major damage to buildings and businesses in southeast Wisconsin.
In Waukesha County, the tornado was the most severe one the county has seen since 2010. Another more minor tornado touched down in southwest Marquette County.
The tornadoes formed as much of southeast and central Wisconsin were battered by severe thunderstorms. The National Weather Service continues to investigate potential tornado touchdowns in at least three other Wisconsin counties as of April 15 in the afternoon.
Here’s what we know about the tornado that hit Waukesha County on Tuesday:
Where did the Sussex and Lisbon tornado touch down?
The tornado touched down in the village of Lisbon, just north of the village of Sussex in Waukesha County, according to the weather service.
What was the length and duration of the Sussex and Lisbon tornado?
The tornado traveled 3.2 miles over a duration six minutes, according to weather service. Winds reached a maximum of 120 mph.
What was the damage from the Sussex and Lisbon tornado?
No one was injured in the tornado, but multiple buildings in Lisbon and Sussex incurred major damage on Tuesday.
In particular, the tornado hit Lisbon Presbyterian Church, a 169-year-old building on Hillside Road. Though the church’s roof sustained heavy damage, no one was in the building when the tornado hit, and the church’s stained-glass windows survived the storm.
Multiple tenants in a nearby business park also sustained heavy damage, with lumber, insulation and shards of window glass strewn across the park lawn.
During the storm, as many as 25,000 Wisconsin utility customers lost power during the storm, with more than half of the outages occurring in Waukesha County. By midday April 15, about 4,500 remained without power.
How strong was the Marquette County tornado?
The weather service also confirmed an EF1-level tornado touched down southwest of the Village of Endeavor in Marquette County. The brief tornado had a path that was 50 yards wide.
What is a EF2 tornado?
The Sussex tornado clocked in at EF2 out of a scale from 0-5. EF, which stands for Enhanced Fujita Scale, is the tornado “rating” scale used by the National Weather Service and adopted by other countries in 2007.
The Enhanced Fujita Scale is a revised, more accurate version of the original Fujita–Pearson scale developed by Ted Fujita and Allan Pearson in 1971 at the University of Chicago.
The EF Scale is both a damage indicator and scale of wind gusts. EF Scales are typically calculated based on observed damages after the event has passed.
Here’s the estimated gust speed of each EF rating, as well as the damage level associated with each rating:
Since the NWS measured the Sussex tornado at 120 mph, it landed in the EF2 rating. The Marquette County tornado was rated at EF1, but did not have an exact speed.
When was the last tornado in Waukesha County?
Before Tuesday, Waukesha County’s most recent tornado landed in July 2023 in between the villages of Eagle and Palmyra, just south of the Ice Age Trail. It was an EF1 tornado that traveled 0.46 miles and was 90 yards wide, according to the NWS. It lasted for less than a minute.
The most destructive Waukesha County tornado in recent memory took place on June 21, 2010 in roughly the same location as the 2023 EF1.
The June 2010 tornado was categorized as an EF2 event. The tornado traveled 5.2 miles, spanned 880 yards wide and lasted for about 10 minutes, according to the weather service. It caused more than $20 million in damage to county properties, including to more than 200 homes, eight of which were destroyed.
A commercial horse riding business also sustained major damage in the tornado. One donkey was killed, four hayride wagons were destroyed and 25 acres of trees were severely damaged.
Did any other tornadoes touch down in Wisconsin on Tuesday, April 14?
As of 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, the weather service has only officially confirmed the tornadoes in Waukesha and Marquette counties from Tuesday’s storm.
The radar also picked up a tornado in Union Center in Juneau County, and the weather service’s ground survey team is determining whether the tornado was EF3 or greater, according to Alex Ferguson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in La Crosse.
Weather service surveyors are also still assessing potential tornadoes in Walworth, Racine and Kenosha counties.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What to know about Wisconsin tornadoes in Sussex and Marquette County
Reporting by Maia Pandey and Caden Perry, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
