Experts have completed their study of the 14-mile-long path of Wednesday night’s tornado in western Iowa that hit a Boy Scout camp, killing four boys and injuring dozens. Becky Griffis, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service office in Valley, Nebraska, says the storm that demolished the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in Harrison County was very powerful.
Griffis says the tornado strength is being ranked as an EF-2 or EF-3 as it appears the winds were up to 135-miles per hour, perhaps higher. She says that was just one small part of Wednesday night’s outbreak of very severe weather across the region.
She says there were seven tornadoes in that storm, starting southwest of Lincoln, Nebraska, then near Omaha and the suburb of Elkhorn, all the way out to Little Sioux and as far northeast as Castana, Iowa. Of all the twisters that night, only the one that hit the Scout camp caused any serious damage or injuries.
None of the others produced any damage on the ground, she says, "There were brief touchdowns, brief spin-ups and they were gone." In addition to the four Scouts killed, another 48 Scouts and leaders were injured. About a dozen are still hospitalized. Among those killed, three boys were from Omaha, the fourth was from Eagle Grove, Iowa.