On Monday, January 16, two tornadoes touched down in eastern Iowa outside of Cedar Rapids. One of these, an EF-1, crossed I-80 and knocked over a semi. Read more about it here.
As December 15, 2021, showed us, while tornadoes are rare in the winter they can happen. Tornadoes in January are much more common in the southeast US, where access to the warm Gulf of Mexico air is much better, providing the ingredients for tornadoes throughout the winter. How rare is it for a tornado to touch down in Nebraska or Iowa? Very rare! In both states, only one other day had tornadoes in the month of January. One was a small tornado event, while the other was a major tornado outbreak.
NEBRASKA: JAN 7, 1992
The one day with a January tornado in Nebraska was on January 7, 1992. That day, 6 tornadoes touched down north of Grand Island in Merrick, Nance, and Sherman Counties. All of these tornadoes were brief and did minor damage. However, one of those was an F-2 tornado south of Loup City, which did slightly more damage to a farmhouse.
IOWA: JAN 24, 1967
Iowa's January tornado count is more than Nebraska's, but all of them occurred in the most significant January tornado outbreak this far north. Very warm air surged north as far as Wisconsin, where several locations exceeded the 60s that day. This warm air clashed with a powerful cold front moving across Missouri and Iowa, and tornadoes were spawned. The outbreak produced 30 tornadoes, many of which were strong (F-2 or greater) tornadoes. Many of the tornadoes in Iowa were on the eastern side of the state.
The most notable tornado of the outbreak did not occur in Iowa, but in St. Louis, Missouri. An F-4 tornado moved through the western suburbs of St. Louis, doing significant damage. A tornado also traversed across Janesville, Wisconsin, the furthest north January tornado until 2008.
