Linn County tornado an EF-4 under new scale

Linn County residents help a neighbor salvage some of his belongings after an EF-4 tornado -- with winds up to 200 m.p.h. -- struck and leveled his home. Despite heavy damage to several farms, homes and outbuildings, nobody in the area where the tornado came through was killed or seriously hurt. Kansas is among the states included in 'Tornado Alley,' a region that runs up from the Gulf of Mexico, where tornadoes most frequently occurs. Tribune photo/Michael Glover

National Weather Service meteorologists rated a tornado that struck Linn County in February as a "devastating" twister that packed winds up to 200 miles per hour.

Andy Bailey, a NWS meteorologist working from the Pleasant Hill, Mo., office, classified the tornado as an EF-4 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. An EF-4 can level homes, toss vehicles and turn debris into deadly missiles.

The highest rating is an EF-5, which produces winds reaching 319 mph. That's enough to lift frame houses and small buildings off of their foundations, throw car-sized debris more than 100 yards and strip bark off trees.

The new Enhanced Fujita Scale is a recent upgrade to the original Fujita Scale created in the 1970s to determine the intensity of twisters.

But on Feb. 1, NWS switched to the enhanced scale. The newer version more accurately measures wind speed based on more "damage indicators" like structures ranging from a small barn to a large shopping mall and the "degrees of damage" associated with those structures. The estimated wind speed then determines the EF-Scale category.

Around 7 p.m. Feb. 28, the tornado touched down in western Linn County and traveled nearly the entire length of the county and into Bates County, Mo., Bailey said. It traveled south of Centerville and north of Blue Mound and Pleasanton.

While on the ground, it leveled a house owned by Dave Matthes, who was tucked in a corner of the basement as the tornado lifted the entire house off its foundation. He escaped without injuries.The storm also damaged a shed and two barns on Matthes' farm.

"Everyone who was involved in this is lucky to be alive," Bailey said. "This was a very powerful tornado."

After traveling east from his residence, the tornado took out a shed and damaged other structures at a metal recycling business about one-quarter mile from Matthes' residence.

The tornado also completely decimated a power substation, cutting power to many rural and city residents in the county.

Bailey said despite the damage, the tornado's life on the ground was mostly on open prairie and farmland. He said bigger twisters usually stay on the ground longer than smaller tornados.

"If this tornado would've hit, say, downtown Kansas City, it would've been on CNN," Bailey said. "It would've been really destructive."

An EF-0 ranges from 32-73 m.p.h., and EF-1 is 50-113 m.p.h., EF-2 is 70-158 m.p.h., EF-3 is 92-207 m.p.h., EF-4 is 116-261 m.p.h., and EF-5 is 142-319 m.p.h.