Little Sioux, IA Tornado

The big news from yesterday's tornado outbreak was the killer tornado just north of Little Sioux, IA. Four scout troops died at the Little Sioux Scout Ranch when the tornado tore through the campground. The storm that spawned the tornado was clustered in a line of storms -- certainly not an ideal setup for tornadoes. The yellow triangle (Tornado Detection Algorithm) indicates the approximate location of the tornado in the messy base reflectivity scan.


However, the storm relative velocity clears up the picture and certainly shows strong rotation within the storm. The Omaha, NE radar sampled the storm at about 2,500 feet above the surface, and the SRV product shows a 41 knot inbound velocity and a 56 knot outbound velocity. The gate-to-gate rotation was 97 knots or 112 mph.


The same storm system produced a rash of tornadoes in north-central Kansas last evening as well (see the post below). In fact, heavy damage was reported around Kansas State University, including a building that houses a nuclear research reactor! The same supercell earlier wiped out the town of Chapman and later killed a person near Soldier, KS.