Easter Sunday marked the one-year anniversary of a historic tornado outbreak that occurred Friday, March 31, 2023, in eastern Iowa. More than 150 tornadoes touched down across the state and the country.
“Everyone asks if it sounded like a locomotive, and that doesn’t even compare,” says Aaron Kelly, who found himself in the basement of his home seconds before a tornado thrashed through his property.
“It’s what you feel,” he explained. “The sound was overwhelming yes, but that feeling right to your very core was much, much, more than any locomotive I’ve been close to. It was all consuming.”
Aaron and his wife Katie live northwest of Wilton. However, Aaron was the only one home during the event, his wife and daughter were 20 minutes away on their way to Muscatine.
The National Weather Service in Davenport reports that 29 tornadoes formed in its NWS Quad Cities County Warning Area (CWA), with eleven reported injuries. Thankfully there were no fatalities.
It was one of the nation's largest tornado outbreaks in terms of total number of tornadoes in history, and was the largest tornado outbreak in the NWS Quad Cities forecast area on record since 1950.
The communities of Wilton, West Liberty, and Durant felt the gales of the winds and force of the rain, which caused minor property damage across the communities.
However, it was the folks just northwest of Wilton that felt the brunt of the cataclysm when one of the actual tornadoes formed and ravaged their properties.
The Kelly’s lost the top and front half of their house, as well as a shop. “I saw it form up over the Norton’s, so I got to the basement. In a matter of seconds it was on our place,” recalls Aaron.
Just across the street lived farmers Bill and Deb Norton. During the event they were both home with their family. Unfortunately, the couple lost their entire house… and then some.
“It happened so fast, just in a blink of an eye everything was gone,” says Bill, 72-years-old. He’s lived in Iowa his whole life and is well-known in the Wilton community.
“It didn’t even look bad at first, just a little gray,” he recalls. “But then I looked up and all I saw was a big ball of black. I’ve never even imagined it would be like that.”
Bill’s wife Deb was in the house, while his son and grandson ran into the house right before the tornado struck. They held on for dear life as the twister leveled their home.
In less than a minute their life changed forever. Deb was sucked out of the house and suffered a broken knee cap. Their farm was completely destroyed.
But you know, when the days are at their darkest, that’s when Iowan’s step up.
“Probably the biggest thing I remember is the help from the community. There were cars lining up the road, I’m guessing there were 200 people here to help,” says Bill.
“I can’t say enough about how thankful I am to the community and my friends; they really helped us through a tough time,” he says, with a special thank you to Ken Morrison Construction.
A GoFundMe was started to help rebuild the farm. The initial goal was to raise $25,000. As of today, there have been 310 donations with more than $28,500 raised.
The tragedy didn’t stop there for Bill though. Deborah Joyce Norton, at the age of 70, passed away on Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City.
Though their home has been rebuilt, she never got to see the farm completed.
“She’d love it,” says Bill tearfully “That’s been the hardest part. I’ve been pushing things along for her, but it’s been tough.”
As for the Kelly family, they just moved back into their home a week ago, they had been renting a house in Bennett during the meantime as the house was rebuilt.
“I was naïve enough to think we’d only have some roof and window damage,” Aaron recalls, saying he didn’t realize the full devastation of the storm until he exited the basement that day.
“We’re still in the process of moving, we’ve got boxes stacked everywhere,” he says. “But we are moved in and living in our house again. It’s good to be back.”
The Norton and Kelly homes have been rebuilt, but there’s work still to be done. Bill Norton and his family will be putting in a new driveway, with hopes of building a new dairy barn in June.
As mentioned before, the widespread tornado outbreak occurred Friday, March 31, 2023, involving nearly 150 tornadoes across the country.
“It was really unique in that there were 29 tornadoes just in our forecast area, which is 36 counties,” says John Haase, Meteorologist for the National Weather Service (NWS) in Davenport.
The NWS of Davenport covers eastern Iowa, western Illinois and two counties in northeast Missouri. The scope of the storm was unlike anything it had ever seen in 70 plus years.
“It’s hard to imagine anything like that happening again soon, but I guess you can’t rule anything out,” he says. “We’ve been getting these extreme events for several years.”
He’s referring to the Derecho in 2020, the historic tornado event last year and the massive snowstorms that occurred within a day of each other back in January 2024.
“We’ve got this drought going and we’ve had four severe weather events this year already,” says Haase, “There seems to be an uptick.”
“I don’t know if we’re just in a cycle of the extremes the last few years, you can’t really pin it down on any particular event or reason, so we’ll just have to see if it keeps on going,” he adds.
During the tornado event on March 31, 2023, the strongest tornado developed southwest of Keota, Iowa, and moved northeast towards Wellman, Iowa, before finally dissipating in far southwestern Johnson County.
It was rated EF4 with maximum sustained winds estimated around 170 mph. This was the strongest tornado in the NWS Quad Cities forecast area since 1995.
The culprit to this outbreak was a potent low-pressure system that developed on the morning of March 31 and tracked across the state of Iowa.
This system pulled unseasonably warm and moist conditions into the Midwest, that combined with a very favorable wind profile to create a volatile environment for severe thunderstorms.
Discrete supercell thunderstorms initially occurred, but quickly transitioned into a quasi-linear area of storms resulting in additional tornadoes and severe straight-line winds.
That being said, tornado season typically occurs during May and June, though it ramps up in April due to heat and moisture coming in from the gulf with the transition into Spring.
Haase says the bulk of severe weather occurs between 3-10 p.m., which makes sense. The majority of the historic March 31 tornado event occurred between 5-6 p.m.
“But you can get severe weather anytime, day or night,” he adds. “That’s why we recommend monitoring the weather radio, so you can hear the alerts at any time.”
“Please be aware of what the weather’s doing every day, keep an eye on the clouds,” he says. “We’ll have watches and warnings out. Even days ahead we’ll start talking about the potential for severe weather.”
He says major events can typically be seen five or six days ahead. Though we can’t control the weather, we can at least become aware of the possibility.
Updates from the National Weather Service of Davenport can be found at www.weather.gov/dvn, as well as most media outlets online.
Also, know it could happen anytime. Bill Norton certainly never thought he’d come face to face with a twister, even after spending his entire life living in Tornado Alley.
“No, I never thought a tornado could hit here,” he says, chuckling. “I guess that’s what I get for opening my big mouth.”
Various information from Rich Kinney, Warning Coordination Meteorologist of the National Weather Service Quad Cities IA/IL.