Tornadoes · United States · Iowa · 2000
F1 tornado, Neola to Portsmouth, Iowa, June 13, 2000
From Neola to Portsmouth, this F1 tornado ran 10.6 miles across Harrison, Pottawattamie and Shelby counties on June 13, 2000, touching down at 3:10 PM CDT and reaching 330 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $30,000 of property damage.
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 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mphthis tornado
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
- F1
- Date
- June 13, 2000
- Touchdown
- 3:10 PM CDT (20:10 UTC)
- Path length
- 10.6 miles (17.1 km)
- Path width
- 330 yards (302 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $30,000
- Counties
- Harrison, Pottawattamie and Shelby counties
- Touchdown point
- 41.500, -95.730
- Lift-off point
- 41.630, -95.570
- Record number
- 320
What the Weather Service recorded
This tornado crossed from Pottawattamie county into Harrison county then lifted in extreme southwest Shelby county. See the Harrison county report for more description.
This tornado touched down just inside the Pottawattamie county line near highway 34 and Interstate 680. It then tracked near Beebeetown, then to near Persia before crossing into Shelby county southwest of Portsmouth. The tornado was caught on film by a local TV meteorologist as well as a storm chaser. The tornado stayed mainly in open county, but it did down some trees and power lines.
This is where the Beebeetown, Harrison county Iowa, tornado lifted. See the tornado listing for Harrison county for more details.
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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19:02 UTC | 19:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | OAX |
| 19:45 UTC | 20:30 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
| 21:11 UTC | 21:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | OAX |
| 21:44 UTC | 22:30 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
| 23:18 UTC | 00:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | OAX |
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 Moderate Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 20:18 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
8.2 hours before the tornado, 66 km from the path. June 13, 2000.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 997 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -254 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 301 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1473 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 29 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 26 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 108 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 83 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.1 K/km
Omaha, NE (KOAX), 00:00Z
3.8 hours after it, 66 km from the path. June 14, 2000.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 670 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -84 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 420 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 963 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 51 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 23 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -161 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- -27 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- -0.3
- Supercell composite
- -1.8
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.2 K/km
The surface observations
Harlan (HNR), 26 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18:45 UTC | 82.4 | 73.4 | 160° 17 kt | 28 | 1005.1 | |
| 19:25 UTC | 84.2 | 71.6 | 180° 20 kt | 29 | 1004.1 | |
| 19:45 UTC | 84.2 | 73.4 | 170° 20 kt | 30 | 1004.1 | |
| 21:05 UTC | 75.2 | 230° 9 kt | 1004.4 | |||
| 21:25 UTC | 180° 11 kt | 1003.7 | ||||
| 21:45 UTC | 170° 6 kt | 1002.4 | ||||
| 22:05 UTC | 68 | 64.4 | 190° 13 kt | 22 | 1003.4 |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Omaha radar (KOAX), 66 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:09 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 13, 2000
16 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 13 | 3:04 PM CDT | F0 | Otoe, NE | 3.0 | 150 | |||
| June 13 | 3:15 PM CDT | F0 | Chickasaw, IA | 0.5 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| June 13 | 3:37 PM CDT | F0 | Otoe, NE | 0.1 | 40 | |||
| June 13 | 3:54 PM CDT | F0 | Cass, NE | 0.1 | 40 | |||
| June 13 | 4:00 PM CDT | F0 | Dodge, NE | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| June 13 | 4:20 PM CDT | F0 | Page, IA | 3.0 | 100 | |||
| June 13 | 4:20 PM CDT | F1 | Stutsman, ND | 5.0 | 100 | 1 | ||
| June 13 | 4:26 PM CDT | F0 | Montgomery, IA | 8.0 | 150 | |||
| June 13 | 4:54 PM CDT | F0 | Ochiltree, TX | 0.1 | 20 | |||
| June 13 | 5:10 PM CDT | F1 | Ellsworth, KS | 1.0 | 110 | $10,000 | ||
| June 13 | 5:34 PM CDT | F0 | Stafford, KS | 4.9 | 50 | |||
| June 13 | 6:44 PM CDT | F1 | Marshall, IA | 14.0 | 40 | $150,000 | ||
| June 13 | 7:45 PM EDT | F0 | Lee, FL | 2.5 | 0 | |||
| June 13 | 7:37 PM CDT | F0 | Tama, IA | 0.2 | 20 | $10,000 | ||
| June 13 | 8:46 PM CDT | F0 | Hemphill, TX | 0.1 | 20 | |||
| June 13 | 11:56 PM CDT | F0 | Woodward, OK | 0.3 | 20 | $3,000 |
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.