At least two Iowans were hurt in last night’s strong thunderstorms, with the bulk of the damage in central Iowa, near Boone and Ames. Rod Donavon, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, confirms a tornado struck near Creston in southern Iowa’s Union County. Donavon says there were a couple of confirmed tornado touchdowns, three and four miles west of Creston, last night. But in Boone County, it was all straight-line winds up to 70 and 80 miles an hour. He says there was “no tornadic rotation” there, just very strong winds.
Donavon says the wreckage around Boone and Ames may look like a tornado stuck, but that’s not the case. While he says there was quite a bit of damage in Boone County and into western Story County, it was due to “extreme winds…that can produce tornadic-like damage” but in this case it was no tornado. Those winds tipped a tree onto a mobile home in Moingona, where the two people were hurt. Several other homes were damaged, some heavily.
Elsewhere, inch-diameter hail was reported and semi-trucks were flipped off highways in several locations across the region. Trees falling on power lines knocked the electricity off to 23-hundred Iowa homes, according to MidAmerican Energy. Tornadoes were also reported overnight in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.