Unrated tornado, Mingo, Iowa, September 22, 2019

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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

September 22, 2019

Touchdown

1:03 AM CDT (06:03 UTC)

Lifted

1:04 AM CDT (06:04 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.2 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Crop damage

$100

County

Jasper County

Touchdown point

41.772, -93.318

Lift-off point

41.783, -93.316

Record number

1909220003-01

Generally speaking, there was not much to write home about with regards to the synoptic setup for severe or highly impactful weather. Even so, an environment with nominal MUCAPE (often under 1000 J/kg), high shear (0-1km shear in excess of 30 kts, 0-1km helicity in excess of 200 m2/s2), and consistent low level moisture transport was able to produce weak, brief tornadoes and sustained periods of moderate to heavy rainfall. ||Specifically on the tornadoes, two brief weak tornadoes occurred in the relatively low CAPE, high shear environment in central Iowa. Little impact was observed from the tornadoes as they stayed in rural areas and away from structures and towns. ||On the rainfall front, multiple rounds of showers and storms produced numerous reports of 2 to 3 inches of rainfall throughout southern Iowa, even trickling north into central Iowa in a few instances.

Tornado was suggested by a TDS on radar and subsequently confirmed via high resolution satellite imagery. A short path through rural cropland, hence the EF-U rating.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:48 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), 34 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 06:05 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

1 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.