Rare rope tornado causes anxious moments, no damage in county

A tornado in Council Bluffs put Mills County in a warning Thursday evening but no tornado touched down in the county, according to Mills County Emergency Management Director Larry Hurst.

The tornado, which Hurst said he’d classify more as a waterspout than an actual tornado, touched down on Lake Manawa Thursday afternoon, according to reports from the National Weather Service.

The thin funnel-shaped cloud – often referred to as a “rope tornado” – reportedly took in water from the lake before dissipating to the southeast. No damage was reported in Council Bluffs.

Hurst said the severe weather resulted in heavy rain and some strong winds in northern Mills County but no reports of funnel clouds. Hurst has received no reports of damage in Mills County.

When the county-wide tornado warning was issued, Hurst set up two spotters along Bungee Road and 221st Streets for “precautionary reasons.”

“There was a warning here but it only touched down on the water in Lake Manawa,” he said. “They had an eye on it and by most accounts it lasted only four or five minutes.”

Hurst did say the warning came as a surprise because there was no “typical cloud formation” to indicate a tornado and there was no severe weather forecast.

“It was a phenomena due to the humidity, the moisture content and the time of day; it just formed,” Hurst said. “And of course it formed on water so it was just drawing that water up from Lake Manawa. It was an interesting phenomenon.”