Unrated tornado, Winthrop, Iowa, July 5, 2022

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

July 5, 2022

Touchdown

9:00 PM CDT (02:00 UTC)

Lifted

9:01 PM CDT (02:01 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Buchanan County

Touchdown point

42.476, -91.758

Lift-off point

42.474, -91.745

Record number

2207052000-01

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

• Brief tornado reported by a Fire Department Spotter.

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

A line of showers and thunderstorms tracked east across Iowa Tuesday afternoon and evening bringing damaging wind, occasional lightning, and heavy rain to eastern IA and northwest IL. The strongest reported winds of 60-70 mph, occurred in Buchanan and Linn counties. These winds brought down trees and powerlines as they moved through in the evening.||A brief tornado occurred during the evening hours just southeast of Fairbank in an open field. Another brief tornado occurred just west of Winthrop IA in an open field. Since no visible damage was observed with either tornado, they were assigned an EF-U rating. The NWS would like to thank Buchanan County Emergency Management for assistance with the storm survey.

Video from a Winthrop Fire Department Spotter captured a brief tornado just west of Winthrop. The tornado occurred in open farm land, and there was no observable damage to assign an EF-scale rating. Time estimated by radar. Assistance from Buchanan County Emergency Management is greatly appreciated.

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

18 minutes of warning. NWS DVN issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:42 UTC, 18 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 21:35 UTC and running to 03:54 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. The outlook in force was issued at 00:56 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), 136 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:00 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 2022 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

6 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.