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EF1 tornado in Pottawattamie County, Iowa

Tornado May 6, 2024 · Pottawattamie County, Iowa

EF1
Rating
1.5 mi
Path length
200 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 200 yards (0.11 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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 touched down at the intersection of Beechnut Road and 360th Street. Several trees were snapped at the base of their trunks as this tornado moved to the northeast. The tornado continued to produce tree damage, with branches broken along 370th Street, half a mile north of Brunswick Avenue. This tornado dissipated shortly after crossing 370th Street. The peak estimated winds in this tornado were 93 miles per hour. The peak measured width of the damage path was 200 yards, with an estimated average width of 150 yards.

The wider storm

Upper air analysis depicted a negatively tilted trough over the western CONUS, with its axis extending from the central Rocky Mountains northwest into the Pacific Northwest. At the surface, a low-pressure center was deepening over the northern High Plains along with a secondary surface low in western Nebraska. Extending south out of these pressure centers was a Pacific cold front. At 21 UTC, a warm front was noted to extend southeast from southwest Nebraska into northeast Oklahoma. As the evening progressed, strong warm air advection ahead of the mature low-pressure pushed the warm front north into eastern Nebraska by 00 UTC.

Along this warm front and ahead of the Pacific cold front, several lines of strong to severe thunderstorms moved through eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. The first line of strong storms moved through central and northeast Nebraska after 4:30 PM CDT. No severe reports were associated with these storms in the OAX CWA. Another intensifying segment of the same line moved into southeast Nebraska by 7:30 PM CDT, this time south of the northward advancing warm front. These storms tracked northeast through southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa, producing numerous severe wind gusts across the area and multiple spin-up tornadoes. The vast majority of wind gusts recorded with these storms ranged from 55 to 70 miles per hour. The strongest wind gust was measured at 71 miles per hour in Richardson County. 2 EF-0 tornadoes were confirmed in southeast Nebraska, both in Gage County. There were also an additional 3 tornadoes confirmed in southwest Iowa, all EF-1 tornadoes.

Began near Macedonia (41.2030, -95.4990).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1180505. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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