Destination Mapleton

A beleaguered camera autofocus and buffeting RFD winds blurred this photo of an EF3 tornado approaching the western Iowa town of Mapleton around 7:23 PM, Saturday, April 9, 2011. Visible at the top of this image is the rotating edge of the accompanying wall cloud. The image looks northwest and was shot from the west side of Sumac Avenue, located about 1.4 miles NW of Ute, Iowa and 6.8 miles SE of Mapleton. In minutes Mapleton would sustain damage to 60% of its buildings but thankfully produced no fatalities. Despite the obvious tornado structure seen here, our chase team at this moment was not completely sure of what we were seeing because of the fading daylight, distance and overall debris-wrapped nature of the twister, not showing the classic "elephant trunk" appearance.