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EF2 tornado in Pottawattamie County, Iowa

Tornado May 5, 2007 · Pottawattamie County, Iowa

EF2
Rating
11.6 mi
Whole path
400 yd
Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Montgomery County → Pottawattamie County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 400 yards (0.23 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

This tornado crossed into Pottawattamie county from Montgomery county about 4 miles southeast of Macedonia. The total path length was around 11.5 miles. Although over half of it was in Pottawattamie county, most of the damage was done in Montgomery county where a roof was torn off of a house, barns were destroyed and cars were tossed into a field.

The wider storm

A warm front that was along the Kansas and Nebraska border early Saturday morning May 5th, lifted north during the day bringing widespread heavy rain and severe weather, including tornadoes, to eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa. The warm front was part of a large upper level system that brought several days of severe weather and flooding to the region.

Heavy rain and flooding was reported with some of the activity Saturday morning, along with isolated severe thunderstorm reports. However, during the afternoon the severe weather became more widespread over northeast Nebraska where supercells spawned several tornadoes. At this time, thunderstorms, some severe with heavy rain, produced flash flooding over parts of southeast Nebraska. By evening much of the severe weather, including supercell producing tornadoes, shifted into southwest Iowa, although isolated severe thunderstorms persisted over parts of eastern Nebraska until after midnight CDT.

Began near Macedonia (41.1591, -95.3757).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 20275. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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