F0 tornado, Keystone, Iowa, April 8, 2001

1. F040 to 72 mphthis tornado

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

2. F173 to 112 mph

   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

F0

Date

April 8, 2001

Touchdown

9:50 PM CDT (02:50 UTC)

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Benton County

Touchdown point

42.030, -92.320

Lift-off point

42.030, -92.320

Record number

110

Summary for late 4/08/01 to early 4/09/01 event: (For additional details, see individual entries for the dates.)A warm front pushed north through the day on 4/08/01, and extended across southern Iowa and northern Illinois during the evening hours. The boundary combined with a surface wave riding along the front, and an upper-level low, to produce a variety of severe weather during the evening hours of 4/08/01, continuing into the early morning of 4/09/01. Hail from 1/2 inch up to quarter sized was common across parts of northeast and east central Iowa. A brief tornado touchdown occurred in Benton county, and that was the only touchdown of the event. Thunderstorms winds destroyed a large shed in Muscatine county. Some of the thunderstorms produced torrential rain, and caused small streams to come out of their banks in Buchanan county. Thunderstorms continued tracking into northwest Illinois, but hail reports ranged from 1/4 to 1/2 inch, below severe limits.

Brief tornado touchdown on the Benton/Tama county line at Highway 21. No injuries or damage reported.

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

21 minutes of warning. NWS DMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:29 UTC, 21 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 03:00 UTC.

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 Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 00:47 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.

Marshalltown (MIW), 50 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Des Moines radar (KDMX), 121 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:48 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 2001 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.