Tornadoes · United States · Iowa · 2026
Unrated tornado, Taylor County, Iowa, May 16, 2026
This Unrated tornado ran 0.8 miles across Taylor County on May 16, 2026, touching down at 5:51 PM CDT and reaching 20 yards wide. It killed nobody.
Preliminary. This is NWS DMX's damage survey, filed in the Damage Assessment Toolkit as Gravity. The rating, the path and the casualties are the survey's and can change while it is revised. The Storm Prediction Center compiles the official record of 2026 from these surveys and publishes it in the spring of 2027; this page moves to that tornado's permanent address when it does.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The survey
- Rating, as surveyed
- Unrated, preliminary
- Date
- May 16, 2026
- Touchdown
- 5:51 PM CDT (22:51 UTC)
- Lifted
- 5:57 PM CDT (22:57 UTC)
- On the ground
- 6 minutes
- Path length
- 0.8 miles (1.3 km)
- Path width
- 20 yards (18 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Taylor County
- Touchdown point
- 40.730, -94.790
- Lift-off point
- 40.731, -94.775
- Surveyed by
- NWS DMX
- The office's name for it
- Gravity
- Survey last edited
- August 4, 2026
- Record number
- None yet. SPC numbers 2026 in the spring of 2027.
What the survey found
Intermittent touchdowns throughout the path.
Written by NWS DMX in the NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit. A survey is revised as better evidence arrives.
The air that afternoon
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.
Omaha, NE (KOAX), 00:00Z
1.1 hours after it, 148 km from the path. May 17, 2026.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 2743 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -30 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 3549 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1278 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 31 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 9 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 77 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 253 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 1.5
- Supercell composite
- 12.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 7.1 K/km
The surface observations
Clarinda (ICL), 20 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Des Moines radar (KDMX), 142 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:51 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.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2026 tornado in IowaEvery tornado in Iowa since 1950Warnings in force in Iowa nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of May 16, 2026
5 more have been surveyed in the United States that day, so far.
What this means
Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. A survey can be revised, so the rating, the path and the casualties can all still change.
Sources
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.