Editor’s note: “Behind the News” is the product of Sun staff assisted by the Sun’s AI lab, which includes a variety of tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity AI, Google Gemini and ChatGPT.

Meteorologists said this week that a deadly tornado in North Dakota this summer has been upgraded to a top-of-the-scale EF5, and was the first on American soil in 12 years. The June 20 twister killed three people and at its largest was over a mile wide as it touched down for just over 12 miles. Meteorologists from the National Weather Service estimated Monday that the tornado had winds in excess of 210 miles per hour. When a tornado strikes, the weather service and its partners work to determine its strength using the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale, the official system used in the United States since

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