Template:Did you know nominations/2025 Enderlin tornado

2025 Enderlin tornado

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... that the Enderlin, North Dakota, tornado earned the first EF5 rating in 12 years by throwing train cars over four times as heavy and nearly twice the distance needed for the rating?

Source: The source appears on the Damage Assessment Toolkit, and can be found by ensuring the Begin and End Dates specified make a range that include June 20, 2025; then, find the purple EF5 polygon west of Fargo, North Dakota, and click on the southwesternmost purple EF5 damage point at 46.59, -97.56. This might seem convoluted, but this is standard practice within the weather community. The relevant text reads: "Tipped loaded car: The tornado derailed 33 train cars including 19 fully-loaded grain hopper cars and 14 empty tanker cars, mainly tipped from the track. Included in the derailed cars were one filled grain car (~286,000 lbs) and four empty tanker cars (~72,000 lbs) that were pulled into a field away from the track. One of the 4 tanker cars was tossed 600-1000 ft (183-305 m) from the track and an estimated 475.7 ft (145 m) from the distance of the previous tanker car it was attached to before being pulled off of the track; wheel sets detached near the point from which the cars were derailed from the track. It was in this train derailment location that EF-5 damage intensity was noted with greater than 210 mph winds listed officially for this tornado. Extensive collaboration with wind damage experts provided forensic analyses for the train damage that occurred with this tornado. These analyses estimate potential wind speeds of approximately 230 mph are needed to completely overturn a fully loaded grain hopper car. Collaboration with the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University’s Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory estimated a potential wind speed of >119 m/s (>266 mph) to loft the empty tanker car 475.7 ft (145 m) using similar calculations performed in Estimating Wind Speeds in Tornadoes Using Debris Trajectories of Large Compact Objects (Miller et al. 2024). The study, published in the Monthly Weather Review, found that large compact objects lofted greater than 50 m indicate EF-5 intensity winds (greater than 200 mph). The Enderlin train cars were nearly 2× farther than the EF-5 threshold distance and ~4× heavier than the heaviest object modeled in the study."

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Ankarette Twynho
Comment: Apologies about the convoluted source. The article is brand new and already at GA, and weatherspace editors are on it with a fervor I haven't seen since I started editing here (except for ongoing storms). I feel it's only right for this to get some recognition (it was at ITN/C but won't be posted), and I've plenty of QPQs leftover. Again, credit to EF5 and ChessEric for this one.

Improved to Good Article status by EF5 (talk) and ChessEric (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 12 past nominations.

Departure– (talk) 15:51, 12 October 2025 (UTC).

Damnit, I was going to nominate with the exact same hook later today lol (do they hand out 4As if you aren’t the one nominating the DYK?). Original hook is interesting as-is. ^EF⁵ 16:03, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

For the purposes of 4A, I'm fine with you taking credit for this one, as you were the one who basically built this page up to where it is now. Departure– (talk) 16:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Nono, it’s okay, DYK still counts even if you aren’t the one nominating. Maybe we could use the Alex Resel or Henderson images? ^EF⁵ 16:07, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I personally think it'd be only right to use the photo of the moved train cars, but sadly this is one of the only cases of free tornado image, non-free damage image. Departure– (talk) 16:09, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Hey! Don't forget about me! It said me and EF5! XD ChessEric 16:10, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Note that while the article is currently at WP:GAR and will be there for at least a month the nomination is still valid as it was created in the last seven days. ^EF⁵ 13:38, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

The article has been vetted so thoroughly in what are essentially two GARs that I have 0 doubts about its quality. It was nominated within the time limit. I do wonder whether the hook could be simplified to be more accessible to the general audience. "EF5" does not mean anything to most of us, I think. Surtsicna (talk) 21:52, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

@Departure–, EF5, and Surtsicna: How does this sound then?

ALT1 ... that the 2025 Enderlin tornado lifted multiple freight train cars into the air?

I imagine that that it is not unheard of for tornadoes to lift vehicles into the air, but for a layperson, this probably gets the job done without reliance on specialist terminology like EF strength. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 08:00, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: Here's an idea:

ALT2 ... that the 2025 Enderlin tornado lofted and threw loaded train cars further than its surveyors had seen lighter vehicles thrown?

Let me know what you think. A good bit of the interesting-ness of this, to me, comes from how surveyors hadn't seen this to this extent to then. Departure– (talk) 15:14, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

@Departure–: looks good, but I don't see where that would be sourced from. I say if we have a source for it we're good to go. ^EF⁵ 15:58, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

I think the source from the DAT (outlined in the nom) works (though, on second thought, maybe replace "surveyed" with "accounted for"). How about...

ALT3 ... that the 2025 Enderlin tornado threw train cars nearly twice as far as researchers up to then had accounted for?

@Narutolovehinata5: Let me know what you think of this (and if you have any trouble getting to the source). Departure– (talk) 16:12, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

For DAT, I have a short guide on how to use it at User:EF5/How to use DAT. Looks good to me. ^EF⁵ 16:32, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: Any update on this nom? Departure– (talk) 21:02, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

I will leave the final decision to Surtsicna, but I prefer my wording as ALT2 and ALT3 seem just a bit more abstract or at least complicated in terms of understanding. ALT1 could probably be workshopped more, however. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 11:52, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

@Surtsicna: Please address the above.--Laun chba ller 12:53, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Narutolovehinata5 that ALT2 is too complicated, but I also think that Departure– is right about ALT1 not being as interesting as a hook from this article could be. In my opinion ALT3 is the perfect middle ground. Surtsicna (talk) 13:04, 2 December 2025 (UTC)