The widest tornado in Iowa’s history touched down Thursday night near Essex, Iowa.1.78 miles. 3130 yards. More than 31 football fields.That’s how wide the twister was as it ripped through nearly 20 miles of southwestern Iowa as an EF1 tornado with winds up to 110 mph.The Essex tornado’s width surpassed what is now the second widest tornado in width by nearly five football fields.(MORE: Iowa Sees Rare Firenado)The previous record holder touched down in Pocahontas County, Iowa, in April 2011 and raked across the county for more than 17 miles. At its peak, it was 2640 yards wide (or 1.5 miles wide) and at peak intensity, it was an EF3.The largest measured tornado anywhere in the country was 2013’s El Reno tornado, which extended more than 4,500 yards or 2.6 miles across.(MORE: Further beef up your forecast with our detailed, hour-by-hour breakdown for the next 8 days – only available on our Premium Pro experience.)The damage the Essex area tornado did was over a wide extent, but thankfully, it didn’t produce a ton of damage or any severe damage. Most of the damage found in the National Weather Service tornado survey was to power poles, outbuildings and trees.This may have limited the intensity rating of the tornado since the Enhanced Fujita scale is built on damage markers rather than actual wind speeds.There have been well over 3000 tornadoes within Iowa’s borders since 1950.Tornado Myths:Wedge tornadoes have to be strong. There is no correlation between tornado strength and width. Width often depends on how much moisture is available to work with and how low the clouds condense. A more moist environment will generally produce wider tornadoes. Lower-moisture environments tend to produce narrower tornadoes and smaller supercells.The true intensity of a tornado is always known. Since we don’t have measurements in front of every tornado, we don’t have the actual intensity of most tornadoes. Meteorologists and engineers most always take an educated guess about a tornado’s intensity. It is thought that most tornadoes are stronger than their EF rating because of this and because the EF scale depends on structures being hit for a rating. If only trees are hit by a tornado, the rating will be lower even if wind speeds were substantially higher.Large tornadoes cause the most damage. “Some small ‘rope’ tornadoes still can cause violent damage of EF4 or EF5; and some very large tornadoes over a quarter-mile wide have produced only weak damage equivalent to EF0 to EF1,” NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center says.You can find more tornado myths here.(MORE: For even more granular weather data tracking in your area, view your 15-minute details forecast in our Premium Pro experience.)Jonathan Belles has been a graphics meteorologist and writer for weather.com for nearly 9 years and also assists in the production of videos for The Weather Channel en español. His favorite weather is tropical weather, but also enjoys covering high-impact weather and news stories and winter storms. He’s a two-time graduate of Florida State University and a proud graduate of St. Petersburg College.
