Unrated tornado, Maquoketa to Andrew, Iowa, May 23, 2020

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

May 23, 2020

Touchdown

2:24 PM CDT (19:24 UTC)

Lifted

2:25 PM CDT (19:25 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.0 miles (0.1 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Jackson County

Touchdown point

42.170, -90.584

Lift-off point

42.170, -90.584

Record number

2005231324-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS DVN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry.

• A trained spotter reported a brief tornado near Andrew. There was no observable damage to assign an EF-scale rating.

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

Severe thunderstorms tracked across much of eastern Iowa and northwest Illinois in the early afternoon hours of May 23rd, 2020. Storms quickly intensified in an extremely favorable environment, which was the result of a warm front lifting north across the Midwest. Seven tornadoes were confirmed from this event across Iowa and Illinois.

Video passed along by emergency management confirms an EF-0 tornado, which caused some shingle damage at a few homes near Prairie Creek Golf Course, just south of Maquoketa, IA. The tornado path is around 1.5 miles long, and was on the ground for about 4 minutes. The maximum wind speed is estimated at 80 mph.

A trained spotter observed a brief tornado in a field. There was no observable damage to assign an EF-scale rating.

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

30 minutes of warning. NWS DVN issued a tornado warning for this county at 18:54 UTC, 30 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 19:32 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:34 UTC and running to 20:33 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:29 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 Quad Cities radar (KDVN), 62 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:23 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 2020 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

13 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.