F1 tornado, State Center, Iowa, June 13, 2000

1. F040 to 72 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. 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.

7. 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.

Rating

F1

Date

June 13, 2000

Touchdown

6:44 PM CDT (23:44 UTC)

Path length

14.0 miles (22.5 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Marshall County

Touchdown point

42.080, -93.250

Lift-off point

42.100, -93.000

Record number

906

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.

Intermittent track

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

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 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 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.

The Des Moines radar (KDMX), 64 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:43 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2000 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

16 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.