EF0 tornado, Garden City to Steamboat Rock, Iowa, May 29, 2019

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

May 29, 2019

Touchdown

8:15 PM CDT (01:15 UTC)

Lifted

8:19 PM CDT (01:19 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

1.2 miles (2.0 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Hardin County

Touchdown point

42.282, -93.133

Lift-off point

42.299, -93.134

Record number

1905291915-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS DMX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 79 mph.

• Video from Iowa Falls Times Citizen shows tornado moving north/crossing road and moving into an open field. 29

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

An upper level low pressure system was in place with a surface boundary stretched across Iowa from Storm Lake southeastward into southeast Iowa. This boundary provided the focus for thunderstorm development throughout the late afternoon and evening hours. The low level environment provided the needed conditions for many of these storms to rotate and produce funnel clouds and brief, weak tornadoes. Many of the tornadoes that occurred were brief touchdowns in open ares with no damage.

Tornado captured on video east of Garden City. The tornado remained mostly in open farmland but did some minor tree damage to a farmstead that was grazed.

Storm chaser video shows tornado heading north through trees then across open fields before dissipating. Little if any damage occurred other than some minor tree damage.

Tornado occurred southwest of Eldora and was captured on video. The tornado removed the roof of a barn but otherwise remained in open farmland.

Tornado reported from multiple sources just north of Highway 20 and moved northward. Slightly damaged a barn and did some tree damage at another farmstead. Otherwise, the tornado remained in open farmland.

Weak tornado reported northeast of Steamboat Rock along with spotter video. Remained in open farmland. Rated EF-Unknown as no damage indicators were impacted.

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

27 minutes of warning. NWS DMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:48 UTC, 27 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:15 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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:49 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.

Iowa Falls (IFA), 23 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), 79 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:11 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 2019 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

40 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.