EF0 tornado, St Paul, Iowa, June 22, 2007

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

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

3. EF2111 to 135 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. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. EF5over 200 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

EF0

Date

June 22, 2007

Touchdown

7:04 PM CDT (00:04 UTC)

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$1,000

Crop damage

$500

County

Lee County

Touchdown point

40.785, -91.520

Lift-off point

40.785, -91.520

Record number

0706221804-01

Several rounds of heavy rain-producing showers and thunderstorms moved across eastern Iowa and west central Illinois from 12:00 am June 22nd until approximately 6:00 am June 23rd. This occurred on already saturated ground from heavy rains on June 21st. The areas from Waterloo, to Cedar Rapids, to Iowa City, to Wapello, to Burlington, to Macomb were affected the most receiving rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches. Flash flooding was observed across much of the affected area. ||Of particular note, near record flooding occurred on the Iowa River near Marengo, IA where the river level rose over 7 feet in under 3 hours. The 72-hour rainfall total through the morning of June 23rd at the cooperative observation station in Marengo was just over 7.5 inches.||In addition to the flooding, a few of the storms surpassed severe thresholds in Des Moines and Lee Counties in extreme southeast Iowa, producing nickel size hail and a brief EF0 tornado, which damaged a barn and some trees.

A brief tornado touched down, damaging crops and blowing down walls of a garage on Highway 16 just north of St Paul.

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

2 minutes of warning. NWS DVN issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:02 UTC, 2 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:45 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 18:49 UTC and running to 02:00 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, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:02 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.

Mount Pleasant (MPZ), 18 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Quad Cities radar (KDVN), 121 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:06 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2007 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

4 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.