Tornadoes · United States · Iowa · 2000
F0 tornado, Perry to Minburn, Iowa, June 12, 2000
From Perry to Minburn, this F0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Dallas County on June 12, 2000, touching down at 5:03 PM CDT and reaching 20 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
F040 to 72 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
F2113 to 157 mph
Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.
F3158 to 206 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
F4207 to 260 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
F5261 to 318 mph
Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.
Unrated
The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.
The record
- Rating
- F0
- Date
- June 12, 2000
- Touchdown
- 5:03 PM CDT (22:03 UTC)
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.2 km)
- Path width
- 20 yards (18 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Dallas County
- Touchdown point
- 41.730, -94.250
- Lift-off point
- 41.730, -94.250
- Record number
- 904
What the Weather Service recorded
A very moist and unstable airmass was in place over the central U.S. Surface dew point temperatures were in the mid 60s to low 70s across the area. A quasi-stationary front was stretched east to west across west central into southeast Iowa. Thunderstorms erupted along and to the north of the boundary. Many of the storms produced hail of pea to marble size, along with very heavy rainfall. One of the cells became severe and dropped large hail in a swath from Crawford County into Dallas County. Hail of golf ball size was reported with this cell in several locations. One report of nearly tennis ball size hail was received from east of Adel. The storm produced a couple of brief tornado touchdowns. The touchdowns were very brief and in open country. As a result, no damage was reported. The tornadoes were wrapped in the rain and were no more than rope tornadoes at best. The storm weakened very rapidly as it encountered the outflow boundary from further convection to its southeast.
Brief rope tornado
Brief rope tornado
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21:27 UTC | 21:45 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | DMX |
| 21:50 UTC | 22:30 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | DMX |
| 22:32 UTC | 23:00 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | DMX |
Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.
The forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 20:15 UTC.
SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.
The air that afternoon
The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.
Omaha, NE (KOAX), 12:00Z
10.1 hours before the tornado, 182 km from the path. June 12, 2000.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -358 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 30 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 2379 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 28 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 26 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 173 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 216 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.8 K/km
Omaha, NE (KOAX), 00:00Z
1.9 hours after it, 182 km from the path. June 13, 2000.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 2610 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -33 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 4722 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1924 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 29 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 6 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 34 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 182 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 5.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 7.7 K/km
The surface observations
Boone Municipal (BNW), 49 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20:05 UTC | 77 | 66.2 | 80° 7 kt | 1014.9 | ||
| 20:25 UTC | 77 | 68 | 80° 9 kt | 1014.6 | ||
| 20:45 UTC | 77 | 68 | 100° 7 kt | 1014.6 | ||
| 21:05 UTC | 75.2 | 66.2 | 80° 6 kt | 1014.6 | ||
| 21:25 UTC | 77 | 66.2 | 100° 10 kt | 1013.9 | ||
| 21:45 UTC | 73.4 | 66.2 | 90° 9 kt | 1013.9 | ||
| 22:05 UTC | 73.4 | 64.4 | 80° 10 kt | 1013.5 | ||
| 22:25 UTC | 71.6 | 64.4 | 70° 10 kt | 1013.2 | ||
| 22:45 UTC | 73.4 | 64.4 | 90° 12 kt | 1013.2 | ||
| 23:05 UTC | 71.6 | 64.4 | 90° 15 kt | 1013.5 | ||
| 23:25 UTC | 69.8 | 62.6 | 100° 12 kt | 1013.5 | ||
| 23:45 UTC | 68 | 62.6 | 100° 9 kt | 1013.2 |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Des Moines radar (KDMX), 44 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:04 UTC.
Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track
Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2000 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 12, 2000
9 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 12 | 3:29 PM MDT | F0 | Yuma, CO | 0.2 | 50 | |||
| June 12 | 6:12 PM EDT | F1 | Putnam, OH | 0.8 | 50 | $40,000 | ||
| June 12 | 5:30 PM CDT | F0 | Dallas, IA | 0.1 | 20 | |||
| June 12 | 5:25 PM MDT | F0 | Billings, ND | 6.0 | 50 | |||
| June 12 | 6:35 PM CDT | F0 | Grand Forks, ND | 0.5 | 30 | |||
| June 12 | 7:03 PM CDT | F0 | Grand Forks, ND | 0.5 | 20 | |||
| June 12 | 7:43 PM CDT | F1 | Grand Forks, ND | 0.5 | 200 | |||
| June 12 | 8:55 PM CDT | F0 | Custer, NE | 0.1 | 20 | |||
| June 12 | 9:48 PM CDT | F0 | Custer, NE | 0.1 | 20 |
What this means
Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.