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EF0 tornado in Cerro Gordo County, Iowa

Tornado July 28, 2025 · Cerro Gordo County, Iowa

EF0
Rating
1.6 mi
Path length
15 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 15 yards (0.01 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

Broadcast media shared drone imagery of a track developing just east of the I-35 and Highway 18 interchange. The tornado primarily tracked through cropland, but did result in tree damage early in the track for an EF0 rating.

The wider storm

A derecho moved across northern Iowa, resulting in a swath of wind damage with gusts of 60 to 80 mph reported, along with two tornadoes that occurred along the leading edge of the line of storms. The line of storms developed with an embedded shortwave that rode over a larger upper level ridge. That ridge allowed for hot and humid conditions across the area with temperatures in the upper 80s to low 90s and dewpoints in the 70s, resulting in heat indicies well over 100. This made for a deeply unstable airmass with over 5000 J/kg of MLCAPE and the line of storms rode the CAPE gradient across northern Iowa overnight. With 30-35 kts of 0-6 km shear, convection was able to maintain strength, and 0-3 km shear near 25 kts orthognal to the line was able to provide just enough of a tornadic set up. The line of storms reach western portions of the area by around 11 pm local time and finally exited east just after 2 am local time. Widespread tree damage and power outages were reported with this line of storms.

Began near Clear Lake (43.0979, -93.3421).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1290276. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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