EF1 tornado, George, Iowa, April 16, 2024

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

April 16, 2024

Touchdown

2:58 PM CDT (19:58 UTC)

Lifted

3:01 PM CDT (20:01 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.6 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lyon County

Touchdown point

43.258, -96.006

Lift-off point

43.272, -96.001

Record number

2404161358-01

9 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS FSD, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• Collapsed small barn. Some tin tossed into the nearby field. Dropped wind speed due to condition of barn and lack of other nearby damage.
• Three uprooted pine trees.
• Outbuilding destroyed. Pine trees uprooted.
• East facing door on shed collapsed.

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

A negatively tilted upper level wave lifted across the Central Plains on April 16th, with timing of the dry slot ahead of the feature during the afternoon hours. With peak destabilization and development of storms near the triple point in the early to mid afternoon, a mix of hail, damaging winds, and several brief tornadoes occurred.

A tornado developed along 270th Street to the west of Kennedy Avenue. It tracked north-northeastward through Otter Valley Golf Course where it uprooted several trees and damaged a maintenance shed. The tornado continued on a north-northeast path and impacted a farmstead north of the golf course where it destroyed an outbuilding and uprooted several more trees. Debris from the outbuilding was strewn across a field as it continued for another half mile northward before it lifted near the intersection of 260th Street and Kennedy Avenue. The maximum estimated wind speed was 105 mph and the average path width was 50 yards.

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

20 minutes of warning. NWS FSD issued a tornado warning for this county at 19:38 UTC, 20 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:25 UTC and running to 21:50 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 16:40 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 Sioux Falls radar (KFSD), 69 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:00 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 2024 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are

30 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.