Tornadoes and Damaging Winds in Iowa, June 18, 1994

A very unstable airmass remained in place over Iowa. The upper level high pressure built over the area. Meanwhile, a weak upper level disturbance moved west into the state. During the afternoon, the combination of heating and the upper level system was enough to finally break the cap. Thunderstorms fired rapidly by the early afternoon hours. The storms were mainly over the east half of Iowa. The strongest storms were over the north-central counties. Scattered reports of gusty winds were received over east-central Iowa. Trees were downed in Cedar County, a large machine shed was destroyed in Clayton County, and wind damage was also reported in Clinton County. The storms became tornadic over north-central Iowa. The reports of funnel clouds were too numerous to mention. Several touch downs occurred. Since wind flow and shear were both weak, the tornadoes were short lived. All but one of them were very weak tornadoes that touched down briefly in fields. Although the tornadoes were weak, a report of the tornado in southern Kossuth County indicated that it was between 40 and 100 meters in width. A strong tornado touched down in Garner, then moved south for about six miles. At Garner, the tornado struck a country club. Windows and doors were blown out at the club. A cadillac was picked up and tossed 250 feet onto a green at the club. The car was demolished. Four golf carts were also lifted and thrown through the air by the tornado. Windows were also blown out of a house in a nearby residential area. After passing through the country club, the tornado caused structural damage to two other businesses. The brick wall on one building was removed. At the other, damage to the building structure was reported, though not as serious. The rest of the tornado track was through open country south of Garner. The other fairly strong tornado touched down south of Britt. It caused damage to the two farmsteads that it moved through. The first farmstead it hit was vacant, the second was not. No injuries were reported, however several farm buildings and two silos were destroyed. The tornado formed first as two separate funnel clouds. The two merged, descended, and became a tornado south of Britt. The tornado moved southwest and became stationary in a field. The tornado reported grew in size as it remained stationary. It remained for a while before dissipating after a few minutes.