The Most Powerful Tornado to Ever Hit Iowa

The Hawkeye State is known for many things: The best corn in the world, the legendary butter cow at the Iowa State Fair, and the Field of Dreams, to name a few. But it's also known for having some of the most powerful and erratic weather in the entire country.

There have been some truly devastating tornadoes that have rolled through Iowa over the years, but one of them is the granddaddy of them all. A storm so formidable, it took out nearly everything that was unlucky enough to be in its path of destruction.

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According to A-Z Animals, the most powerful and deadliest tornado ever to hit the state of Iowa occurred around the Charles City area in May of 1968. In fact, it wasn't just one tornado, but a series of storms that absolutely devastated the entire region.

The storm produced two F1 tornadoes, one F2, and two F5 tornadoes, according to the Fujita Scale.

Out of all 46 storms that were part of this outbreak, only two registered as F5s on the Fujita Scale: one unnamed tornado that struck the northern Iowa counties of Fayette and Oelwein, and the Charles City Tornado, which had a 62-mile path and affected six counties in northern Iowa.

-A-Z Animals Website

13 people died in the series of storms, with an estimated $30 million in damages and over 350 homes being destroyed in the tornadoes.

You can read more about the Charles City Tornadoes of 1968 from A-Z Animals here.