EF0 tornado, Defiance, Iowa, March 22, 2011

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

March 22, 2011

Touchdown

5:47 PM CDT (22:47 UTC)

Lifted

5:50 PM CDT (22:50 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.6 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Shelby County

Touchdown point

41.799, -95.391

Lift-off point

41.811, -95.379

Record number

1103221647-01

A strong upper level trough and associated cold front pushed across the region during the afternoon and evening of March 22. The upper level system caused low pressure to deepen over eastern Nebraska/northeast Kansas with a warm front extending northeast from the low into east central Nebraska and southwest Iowa. By mid afternoon, ahead of the cold front and south of the warm front, temperatures climbed into the upper 70s to lower 80s and dew point temperatures reached the upper 50s. The instability and shear near the low and warm front created a favorable environment for supercell development, a few of which produced damaging hail and at least 3 tornadoes in the area.

A storm chaser caught a rope tornado on video southwest of Defiance. The narrow and weak tornado apparently caused no damage as it remained in an open field and was from the same supercell that spawned a larger tornado to the southwest in Harrison county a little earlier.

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

16 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:31 UTC, 16 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:05 UTC and running to 22:51 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:37 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 Omaha radar (KOAX), 98 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:47 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 2011 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

8 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.