Tornado Hits Denver International Airport

Tornadoes are difficult to observe, since they rarely move over instruments that can directly measure their winds. A rare exception occurred on Tuesday, when an EF-1 tornado obligingly ran directly over the weather station at Denver International Airport, which recorded a wind gust of 97 mph. Remarkably, the weather station was not destroyed, and continued to transmit data after the tornado had passed. There was no major damage reported at the airport.


Figure 1. Radar reflectivity image of the Denver International Airport tornado. The tornado was only five miles from the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar at the airport, allowing a unique up-close view of the precipitation-free doughnut hole where the tornado was. The tornado was about 100 - 200 yards wide.


Video 1. Tornado at the Denver International Airport on June 18, 2013. The Weather Channel has many more photos of the tornado.

Jeff Masters