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Tornado in Polk County, Iowa

Tornado June 25, 2024 · Polk County, Iowa

–
Not rated
0.1 mi
Path length
30 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 30 yards (0.02 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

Not rated. NOAA lists no rating for this tornado. Ratings come from surveying damage, and the National Weather Service now records “EFU” (unknown) when a tornado hit nothing a survey team could rate.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado remained in rural cropland. No damage indicators were impacted, hence the EFU rating.

The wider storm

Scattered convection occurred throughout the day across the area as a weak cold front dropped slowly south across the area. By afternoon the front had largely stalled near the I-80 corridor and more vigorous convection developed along the front, fed by high instability exceeding 3000 J/kg and steep mid level lapse rates of 7 to 8 C/km. Storms first began near Newton and then back built towards the west along the boundary through the evening. Storms produced large hail and stretching resulted in a huge number of funnel clouds, including pictures with a least visible at the same time. Later in the evening a wave across Nebraska moved into Iowa, sweeping east along the instability gradient that the earlier evening convection developed on. A few damaging wind gusts occurred with this line of storms, however it remained sub severe most of the night.

Began near Santiago (41.6630, -93.3767).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1190975. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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