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EF2 tornado in Clarke County, Iowa

Tornado April 26, 2024 · Clarke County, Iowa

EF2
Rating
5.8 mi
Path length
75 yd
Path width
$400K
Damage as recorded
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 EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 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

The emergency manager provided several reports of damage along the path of this tornado. The tornado began just southeast of the Osceola Rest Area along Interstate 35 and travelled northeast through the town of Osceola. EF2 damage was done just southwest of town where a roof was removed from a house along 225th Avenue. There was mainly EF0 to EF1 damage through Osceola from tree damage and limited roof damage to homes in town. The tornado emerged from the northeast side of Osceola and continued northeast through rural Clarke County. The tornado dissipated near Lilac Street after impacting one last farmstead.

The wider storm

Multiple rounds of storms moved across the area on April 26th. The first round was fueled by broad thermal lift and passed across Iowa through the morning with a few of these storms producing small hail but all remained sub severe. The area dried out and cleared out behind this round, allowing for a few hours of destabilization. By afternoon the warm sector was sufficiently unstable between the warm front and a dryline. Robust convection developed along that dryline in the afternoon in western Nebraska, moving into Iowa in the early evening. With sufficient instability, the increasing low level jet, and SRH exceeding 300 m2/s2, large hail and tornadoes occurred with storms across western to central Iowa. In all, 28 tornadoes occurred in Iowa with 18 within the NWS Des Moines area.

Began near Osceola (41.0043, -93.7908).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

17 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1170098. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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