Greenfield, IA Tornado 5-21-24

This video is about my chase day on May 21, 2024 in south western Iowa. I had left my home in Michigan at approximately 3 AM and met up with my friend Chandler Bos in Elkhart, IN close to 6 AM. From there we caravaned to the Des Moines area where we had lunch north of there in Ames.

A line of thunderstorms with embedded super cells, went up along the Missouri river near the borders of Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa around 1 PM and a few went severe warned shortly there after. By that time we had made our way from Ames to Stuart, Iowa, and were traveling south on Adair County Rd P28 in attempt to intercept the storms between Greenfield, and Winterset.

For whatever reason, Chandler and I got separated on the road south and I made the turn towards Greenfield on Iowa 92 and then south from there where I was positioned near a town called Orient. A cyclical supercell had spawned a tornado southwest of there near Corning and it was traveling northeast. I intercepted that tornado as it got within 5 miles SW of Greenfield around 3:24 PM local time. I had scored my first Iowa tornado.

By that time the tornado had grown to over 1/2 mile wide, was completely rain-wrapped, and got within a half mile west of my location. I decided to go back north towards Greenfield on IA Rt 25. Upon doing so I was overtaken by the severe RFD winds over 100MPH that included driving rain and wind driven ping pong sized hail. I pulled over on Rt 25, and let the storm travel off to the north towards Greenfield where it inflicted catastrophic damage.

Dodging several falling tree branches and other tornado produced debris, I stopped momentarily at the edge of town, and noted the damage, which, in the video I said, looked minor at first, and thought the tornado had only inflicted a glancing blow on the town. Oh, my how wrong I was. Upon seeing several dozen first responders and search and rescue on site, I continued to chase the storm north and east, as the storm moved back towards Stuart. It was about that time that my vehicle’s tire pressure sensor alarm went off, notifying me that I had a major loss of air pressure, and a loss that was getting worse by the minute. I must have run over something very significant in the town of Greenfield. I had to break off my chase east of Winterset near the town of Patterson. My passenger side front tire was down to 10 psi by that time.

After adding air to the tire at the Casey’s in Patterson, I gave Chase to the storm that was headed towards Ottumwa. But I was losing air pressure again quickly and had to make the difficult choice breaking off the chase and starting for home home.

At that point, I broke off the chase, and started my journey back to Michigan. There was still severe weather occurring and tornadoes impacting the area north of Des Moines. I had to stop about every 40 minutes and add air to the tire. I did that because I did not want to change to the donut due to my distance from home. The drive home took close to 10 hours but I made it there by 5:30 AM where I got an hour and a half of sleep before getting up to go to work..

All end all the tornado was on the ground for 44 miles, was 1000 yards wide, and had DOW (Doppler on wheels) measured peak wind gusts of 175 to 185 miles an hour. The town of Greenfield endured extensive EF4 damage. 35, people were injured and tragically 5 lost their lives to this powerful tornado.