Keota tornado Friday.(Josh Franzen photo via NWS)
Preliminary reports from the National Weather Service office in the Quad Cities shows at least 16 tornadoes touched down in eastern Iowa Friday.
Lead Meteorologist, Justin Schultz, says that number could still go up as they continue looking at damage.
“The vast majority of the tornadoes that we surveyed were of the EF-zero to EF-2 range. So that’s the bottom portion of the Enhanced Fujita tornado strength scale,” he says.
The strongest tornado traveled through Keokuk and Washington counties. “That was rated as an EF-4. The EF-4 is not as the highest on the Enhanced Fujita scale goes, that goes up to five,” Schultz says, “but still a very powerful and very violent tornado, that particular one.”
He says that tornado started on a smaller scale in Wappello County before traveling into Keokuk County.
“When it was in Wappello County down by Ottumwa — it was an EF-2 at that time,” he says. The EF-4 tornado had a width of 600 yards by the time it hit its peak, and did lots of damage.
EF-4 tornado track in Keokuk and Washington counties. (NWS graphic)
“There were several severely damaged homes near that Keota, Iowa, in fact, wiping one house completely off its foundation,” Schultz says. “So, in addition, a car was lost in the air and toss about one thousand feet into a nearby field and trees were completely debarked and only stubs are the largest branches for remaining. So that kind of gives you a glimpse at the damage that we saw.”
The NWS says there were at least 9 people confirmed injured in the tornadoes — and no one was killed. Schultz says that’s because many of the twisters had a short life. “A lot of these tornadoes were actually fairly short lived, only on the ground for a few minutes or maybe up to 10. But that EF-4, that was actually on the ground for close to 50 minutes. So that was a very long-track, long-lived tornado,” he says. That tornado had estimated peak winds of 170 miles an hour.
Schultz says many of these tornadoes appeared darker as they pulled up dry ground and debris into them as they moved along.