KDSN RADIO News
4 Counties report tornadoes on Tuesday
The National Weather Service says a minimum of four tornadoes touched down in Iowa on Tuesday, including one each in Calhoun, Dallas, Lee and Pocahontas counties. Among the damage, a barn was leveled near Dallas Center and there's major damage to a house near Salem. National Weather Service meteorologist Kristy Carter says survey teams are fanning out this (Wednesday) morning to look over the damage at the various sites.
"Those numbers can change as we continue to get more data throughout the day today," Carter says. "We don't have any ratings on any of those tornadoes yet. We'll continue to be collecting data and trying to look at satellite imagery to figure out paths and surveys."
It was initially thought that just one twister set down in north-central Iowa around 2:30 P-M, but she says there were at least two, perhaps more, that emerged from that single storm cell.
"There were a couple of tornadoes that happened in Calhoun and Pocahontas. They weren't necessarily all continuous, so at least at the moment, we're thinking there are multiple tornadoes," Carter says. "That'll just be part of the data that we continue to collect here today and as we get some information about damage in the path and the survey."
There are multiple reports of large hail all over central and eastern Iowa, while winds were clocked up to 72 miles an hour in Cedar County near Stanwood. All across the state, there were reports of fallen trees and tree limbs which caused dozens of power outages.
"There were some reports of hail. We had one-to-two inches in diameter. We had plenty of wind gusts, 50-to-60 miles an hour," Carter says. "It was really the winds that most people probably experienced, with all of our environmental wind, so outside of thunderstorms."
Funnel clouds were reported over Le Claire and near Cedar Rapids, but neither reached the ground to become tornadoes. No injuries are reported.
