Tornado sirens sounded this morning in at least a half dozen Iowa counties as twisters and funnel clouds loomed.
Meteorologist Donna Dubberke, at the National Weather Service in metro Des Moines, says the Tornado Warnings were issued around 4:45 AM for Crawford and Carroll counties in western Iowa, and later in the morning for Polk, Story, Marshall and Jasper counties in central Iowa.
“We haven’t had any reports of damage yet, so we’ll be looking around to see if anybody did see anything,” Dubberke says. “It would have been smaller tornadoes, but we had two areas on radar that were suspicious, so that’s what those warnings were for.”
Severe storms brought heavy rain and hail to some areas, with wind gusts of 66 miles an hour clocked in Audubon County. Flash flooding was also feared.
“We had some pretty heavy rain and some heavy rainfall rates, so we could get some ponding on some roads, especially in urban areas where we had a couple of inches of water on the roads at times,” she says, “but that seems to have receded.”
Scattered showers will persist much of the day and Dubberke says they’ll be keeping a close eye on northeast Iowa as Dyersville is hosting a Major League Baseball game tonight at the Field of Dreams, which could get rained out.
Tornado sirens sounded this morning in at least a half dozen Iowa counties as twisters and funnel clouds loomed.
Meteorologist Donna Dubberke, at the National Weather Service in metro Des Moines, says the Tornado Warnings were issued around 4:45 AM for Crawford and Carroll counties in western Iowa, and later in the morning for Polk, Story, Marshall and Jasper counties in central Iowa.
“We haven’t had any reports of damage yet, so we’ll be looking around to see if anybody did see anything,” Dubberke says. “It would have been smaller tornadoes, but we had two areas on radar that were suspicious, so that’s what those warnings were for.”
Severe storms brought heavy rain and hail to some areas, with wind gusts of 66 miles an hour clocked in Audubon County. Flash flooding was also feared.
“We had some pretty heavy rain and some heavy rainfall rates, so we could get some ponding on some roads, especially in urban areas where we had a couple of inches of water on the roads at times,” she says, “but that seems to have receded.”
Scattered showers will persist much of the day and Dubberke says they’ll be keeping a close eye on northeast Iowa as Dyersville is hosting a Major League Baseball game tonight at the Field of Dreams, which could get rained out.
