Tornadoes and Hail in Iowa, June 13, 2000

The weather situation during the afternoon was similar to that had taken place in the morning with the exception that the convection in the afternoon was ahead of the cold front instead of the warm front. The upper air pattern remained very dynamic with a powerful upper level jet stream punching into Iowa. The airmass was very unstable. Thunderstorms erupted quite rapidly during the early afternoon hours to the west of Iowa. They moved into the state during the early afternoon with several reports of tornadoes in the far west. The storms weakened somewhat before entering the Des Moines CWA. They took on the form of a line echo wave pattern as they headed across the state. Portions of the line bowed out and produced high winds in many areas. Indeed, high winds was the main severe threat with this line as it raced across the state. There were numerous reports of trees and power lines downed by the high winds. Gusts to around 80 MPH swept into Cass County as the line moved through. Fortunately, this gust occurred in largely open area. The storms caused more structural damage as they headed into the more populated central Iowa counties. High winds damaged a farmstead in Story County south of Collins. Another farmstead north of Collins sustained damage to a barn and part of the house. As the storms progressed east, high winds flattened a barn and broke windows out of a house southwest of State Center in Marshall County. A tornado dropped out of the storm as it moved across Marshall County as well. The track was intermittent, but the tornado did cause damage to at least two farmsteads along its path. Another storm produced a brief tornado touchdown in Tama County. The tornado did little damage, but did manage to hit and knock over a couple of transformers east of Garwin. There was little hail reported with the storms, however one inch diameter hail was reported in Grundy County as Dike. As the thunderstorms moved through the Calhoun County area, lightning struck a gas meter on a house in Farnhamville. The lightning blew out the gas meter, melted the phones in the home, and caused some structural damage to the building itself.