EF2 tornado, Bedford Arpt, Iowa, June 28, 2017

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

June 28, 2017

Touchdown

5:05 PM CDT (22:05 UTC)

Lifted

5:33 PM CDT (22:33 UTC)

On the ground

28 minutes

Path length

7.0 miles (11.2 km)

Path width

1,000 yards (914 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$75,000

Crop damage

$10,000

County

Taylor County

Touchdown point

40.585, -94.777

Lift-off point

40.604, -94.646

Record number

1706281605-01

12 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS DMX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

• Large branches and trunks snapped
• Tree trunk partial snap. Grain bins taken off foundation.
• Tornado scarring in corn field

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

After a complex of storms moved through the state in the early morning hours of the 28th, producing a smattering of sub-severe to severe hail, the area found itself entrenched firmly within the warm sector of a low pressure system passing to the northwest. Resulting MLCAPE values during the afternoon and early evening were in the 2000-3000 J/kg range, along with effective bulk shear around 40-50 kts, LCL heights under 1000 m, and semi-supportive 0-1 km helicity around 100 m2/s2. With such an environment, parameters such as the sig tor (effective layer) highlighted large portions of Iowa during the afternoon and evening hours. Resulting storms quickly went supercellular and proceeded to produce multiple tornadoes and large hail in excess of 2.5 inches throughout central and southwest Iowa. Seven tornadoes occurred across mainly rural portions of southwest into central Iowa in this event. The longest tornado was an EF1 tornado that touched down in Warren County and crossed into Marion County that was on the ground for over 17 miles. Much of the tornado moved through rural portions of Warren and Marion Counties, but one farmstead received damage along the Warren/Marion County line with additional light damage to rural residences in Marion County. A large wedge EF2 tornado touched down in Taylor County moving through mainly rural areas. One outbuilding was nearly destroyed and minor damage was done to a house.

Large wedge tornado moved across southern Taylor County. The tornado remained in rural areas with primarily tree and crop damage. A few structures were also hit with some minor damage to a house and one old outbuilding nearly destroyed. Most intense damage occurred in the later half of the tornado path where EF2 damage was observed as 4 large wooden electrical power line towers where destroyed along with decimating a nearby grove of trees.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS DMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:53 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:53 UTC and running to 02:47 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:58 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), 151 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:03 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 2017 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

25 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.