2026 tornadoes in Iowa

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. 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.

The rating is the survey’s

It is what the office that walked the damage entered in the Damage Assessment Toolkit. SPC reads the same surveys into its database and does not always arrive at the same number.

A survey can be revised

An office revisits a track when better evidence arrives, and ratings, path lengths and widths move. These pages follow the toolkit, so they move with it.

One tornado can be two tracks

A tornado that crossed two offices’ areas is often filed twice, once by each. SPC resolves those into one numbered tornado in the spring, which is why the total here is a count of surveyed tracks and not of tornadoes.

A report is not a tornado

The reports listed below the tracks are what reached SPC as they came in. They carry no rating, no path and no width, one tornado can be several reports, and some turn out to have been something else.

Every tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in IowaThe live radar over Iowa

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. What is preliminary here says what can still change.

NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, the record the survey teams file from the damage, and NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports. Neither is the official database for 2026, which SPC publishes in the spring of 2027.