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EF0 tornado in Polk County, Iowa

Tornado April 23, 2022 · Polk County, Iowa

EF0

Rating

15.4 mi

Whole path

75 yd

Path width

$28K

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Polk County → Boone County → Polk County → Boone County → Polk County → Story County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 75 yards (0.04 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado developed northeast of Polk City and immediately encountered a farmstead. It did some damage to the shingles and facia along with minor tree damage, all rated as EF0 damage. The tornado continued to the northeast across a mixture of farmland and tree rows producing mostly minor tree damage before lifting.

The wider storm

Showers and thunderstorms developed along a cold front in the early morning hours, with quarter sized hail and a few stronger winds gusts reported in central Iowa around sunrise. This pushed east of the area by mid morning and temperatures warmed. This allowed for deep mixing and non-thunderstorm associated wind gusts of 50 to over 60 mph occurred across the area through the afternoon. In the evening a secondary front passed across the state, with daytime heating allowing for more robust convection to develop. The bowing, linear storm system primarily produced a swath of wind gusts and damage, however a few smaller hail reports were made.

Began near Crocker (41.8077, -93.7029).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1033747. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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