EF1 tornado, Millerton, Iowa, April 30, 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 30, 2024

Touchdown

7:12 PM CDT (00:12 UTC)

Lifted

7:16 PM CDT (00:16 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

3.0 miles (4.7 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$250,000

County

Wayne County

Touchdown point

40.828, -93.289

Lift-off point

40.864, -93.259

Record number

2404301812-01

An embedded shortwave passed across Iowa in the afternoon, providing a focus for convection as it phased with an increasing southerly moisture stream. Steep lapse rates, plenty of instability, and hodographs supporting rotating updrafts all came together to create an environment supportive of hail producing supercells. Storms remained somewhat discrete and produced swaths of hail across central and southern Iowa. The largest hail reported was up to baseball sized in Appanoose County. A tornado also occurred in Wayne County east of Millerton with the storms.

This tornado began northwest of the intersection of Raccoon Road and 150th street. The tornado almost immediately impacted a large implement shed and an older wooden barn. The shed was completely destroyed and thrown northeast across 150th street into an adjacent farm field. The barn collapsed downward and shifted to the southeast. The tornado continued northeast through mostly empty cropland and rolling terrain. Some damage was done toward the end of the path near the intersection of Timber Road and 165th street with downed trees and minor outbuilding damage.

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 tornado watch, issued at 18:34 UTC and running to 03:00 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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 Des Moines radar (KDMX), 105 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:09 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

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.