At least five western Iowa counties reported tornado touchdowns over the weekend, but the largest amount of damage is reported from a twister that hit around 3 A.M. Sunday near Atlantic. Karl Jungbluth, meteorologist at the National Weather Service, says the tornado’s path was about seven miles long and up to a half-mile wide.
Jungbluth says: "It touched down with minor damage right on the Cass-Montgomery county border and basically went up Highway 71. The most severe damage occurred about two miles into Cass County, or a couple miles south of the small town of Lyman." He says the tornado packed winds as strong as 130-miles an hour, which tore up several farmsteads in the area around Lyman.
Jungbluth says there were a couple of big dual transmission power poles that collapsed and a farm service business was destroyed, grain bins were demolished and the truck service building was heavily damaged. Several other farmsteads report damage around Grant and Stanton. More damage from likely tornadoes is also reported in Fremont, Pottawattamie and Mills counties. Jungbluth says southwest Iowa’s Union County was hit with hail early Sunday, some of the biggest hailstones that have hit Iowa in some time.
He says a line of storms hit near Afton, just east of Creston, with wind-driven baseball-sized hail that dented siding and smashed windows in houses and vehicles. No serious injuries were reported during the storms in Iowa, though Jungbluth says one person was reportedly hurt during the clean-up phase following the Atlantic-area tornado.