EFU Tornado — Pocahontas, Iowa

2023-05-13 · near Fonda, Pocahontas, Iowa

Event narrative

Intermittent tornado with well developed funnel on video from storm chaser. No damage indicators were impacted, hence the EFU rating.

Wider weather episode

Convection percolated along a warm front across the area through the morning. By afternoon, storms re-strengthened as as daytime heating helped enhance instability. Despite good instability with MLCAPE over nearing 2000 J/kg, lapse rates were modest and speed shear was weak. Despite this, directional shear was good and when combined with instability for brief stretching, allowed for a number of weak and short-lived tornadoes to develop. While 13 tornadoes occurred, they were confined to two small areas in Iowa where storms trained, resulting in several storms over the same locations. In addition, the training storms made for pockets of heavy rain with three to four inches or more of rain. This did result in flash flooding in Pocahontas County with impacts to homes and businesses.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (42.5964, -94.9017)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1090069. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.