EF2 tornado, Hard Scratch to Persia, Iowa, July 12, 2023

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

July 12, 2023

Touchdown

6:05 AM CDT (11:05 UTC)

Lifted

6:14 AM CDT (11:14 UTC)

On the ground

9 minutes

Path length

9.4 miles (15.1 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Harrison County

Touchdown point

41.592, -95.776

Lift-off point

41.563, -95.599

Record number

2307120505-01

31 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 120 mph.

• Home with roof completely removed, windows broken, siding badly damage. Nearby trees all damaged or snapped with convergent damage pattern indicating the center of the tornado was over the home.
• Numerous trees snapped in this area where the narrow tornado clearly went in-between nearby homes.
• 3grain bins demolished. Significant damage to machine shed
• Debris field in corn indicates a convergent flow pattern making this very likely to have been caused by a tornado.

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

A widespread significant damaging wind storm tracked across nearly all of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa on the morning of July 12. These storms produced widespread winds of 60 to 80 mph, with embedded stronger downbursts with wind speeds up to 100 mph. The strongest measured wind gust was 82 mph in Dodge County NE, but some of the high-end straight line wind damage supports embedded wind speeds up to 100 mph.||This storm also produced a few embedded tornadoes. Some of the tornado tracks were only identified by narrow swaths of damage through mature cornfields, with minimal damage otherwise and peak wind speeds similar to the nearby downburst winds. All but one of the tornadoes was preceded by a Wireless Emergency Alert. There were 0 reported injuries or fatalities.

A tornado developed near Overton Road and 286th Street in Harrison County Iowa. The tornado moved rapidly to the east where it made a direct impact on a home. At this location, the home roof was removed, windows broken, siding ruined, numerous trees snapped, a shed was demolished, and numerous items were thrown up to a half mile downstream. The convergent damage pattern at this location, eyewitness reports of wind direction, along with the 80-yard-wide path of more intense damage gives great confidence that this was a tornado. Winds at this location were estimated at 120 mph based on damage. The tornado moved quickly southeast, causing substantial tree damage with snapped trunks being common along the continued 50 to 100 yard wide track. The tornado moved through neighborhood of acreages along Quentin trail where it snapped many trees but moved in between the homes. The track then became more intermittent for a couple miles before it partially removed the roof of a home along 296th Street and caused additional narrow tree damage for the next two miles. The final damage point that was pretty clearly tornado damage was near 305th and Upton where 3 grain bins were crumpled and blown downstream and a machine shed sustained substantial damage. Beyond this point, the tree damage was sporadic and more evident of the larger scale wind field. Should also note that to the west of this tornado track, there was a debris signature evident on radar, but the damage was much more consistent with a focused downburst or series of downbursts that moved up from the Missouri Valley into the Loess Hills and may have helped to loft light leafy debris. This downburst likely led to the development of the eventual tornado.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 05:12 UTC and running to 11:54 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 Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:51 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 Omaha radar (KOAX), 63 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 11:03 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 2023 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

23 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.