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EF0 tornado in Pocahontas County, Iowa

Tornado June 24, 2023 · Pocahontas County, Iowa

EF0
Rating
2.8 mi
Path length
80 yd
Path width
$10K
Damage as recorded
$300
Crop damage
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 80 yards (0.05 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

Tornado developed north of Pocahontas and moved east northeast through many open cropland. The tornado did move a grain bin off its foundation and rolled it into a field across the road. The tornado continued for another half mile before lifting.

The wider storm

A low pressure system slowly dropping SE form the eastern Dakotas and SW Minnesota dragged a cold front across the state during the evening and overnight hours of the 24th of June. Within the warm sector, MUCAPE values peaked in excess of 3000 J/kg during peak heating and scaled back a bit overnight but remained around or in excess of 2000 J/kg. Effective shear values were supportive for organized convection, residing in the 35 to around 50 kt range. Morning and lingering convective activity likely played a role in initiating some storms with remnant outflow boundaries around. As a result, a number of isolated or clustered organized storms were seen during the evening and overnight hours and produced a number of reports of large hail and damaging winds. The largest hail reported was 3 inches in both Palo Alto and Black Hawk counties. A couple of funnel clouds were reported as well.

Began near Pocahontas Muni Arpt (42.7772, -94.6547).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1108275. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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