Three tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in Des Moines County Saturday night.

Several structures were damaged and others ruined Saturday evening after two tornadoes touched down outside of Oakville, their paths creating a combined 3.2 miles of destruction.

They were the second and third tornadoes to touch down in Des Moines County as a result of the storms that rolled through the area Saturday night.

The first tornado, ranked as an EF0 with peak winds of 70 miles per hour, touched down in an open field west of Mediapolis at 7:54 p.m., traveling 0.8 miles, lasting only two minutes and causing no damage.

Tom Philip, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Quad Cities, said that tornado spawned from a typical supercell thunderstorm that merged with another line of storms, enhancing rotation and resulting in the next two, stronger tornadoes.

The second tornado touched down at 8:20 p.m. three miles southwest of Oakville. That EF2 tornado damaged trees and the roof of a home at 7421 260th St. between Oakville and Mediapolis.

"It was like your head was in a dryer, just thundering around you, like a bunch of horses just thundering," said Liz Harvey, who waited out the storm with her husband and two children in the bathroom of their 260th Street home, which they began building about three years ago into the side of a hay field.

Harvey had been in the bathroom with her 2-year-old daughter, Violet, when it started to rain. Her husband, Tyson, and 5-year-old son, Dexter, were at the other end of the house when the storm began to intensify. Tyson Harvey saw the four- by seven-foot dog house outside their home shoot straight up into the air. He didn't wait for it to drop back down before running to the bathroom — the safest room in the house — with Dexter. They remained there until the storm had passed.

Eager to see the storm, Liz and Tyson Harvey poked their heads outside the door.

"It wasn’t one of the pretty, perfect twisters," Liz Harvey said. "It was a huge wall of dust just circling around."

The tornado wasn't quite finished yet, however, and a piece of glass flew into Liz Harvey's eye. Her husband was able to remove it using a q-tip.

The damage to Liz Harvey's eye was minimal, but the same could not be said for the home itself. Outside furniture and trash was scattered about, and the couple could see pieces of their roof stuck in trees and fields. Water that had gotten into the home after the roof was torn off soaked through the carpet. Their lawn mower also had been destroyed.

Working to build their dream home as they could afford it, the Harveys had not yet been able to get to the finishing touches required for them to be eligible for homeowners insurance, such as a retaining wall and a finished ceiling. A family member has set up a GoFundMe account in hopes of raising money to go toward repairs for the home.

While the damage to her home is disheartening and couldn't have come at a worse time due to recent financial struggles, Liz Harvey is grateful no one was hurt.

"We are very, very glad that we're safe and healthy," she said.

The tornado continued east as it passed by the Harveys' home, gaining strength and damaging more trees, as well as siding on another home.

As it reached its peak strength at 120 miles per hour, it destroyed a farm outbuilding and caused significant damage to a home, moving it off of its foundation, blowing out windows and destroying a bolted-down garage.

Philip said the residents of that home had made it safely to the basement before the storm hit and that no one was injured. 

That tornado also threw two pieces of farm equipment 40 yards, moved a pickup truck about 20 yards through the air and snapped three power poles before the twister turned northeast, destroying more trees and hitting power lines before diminishing. It had traveled 1.9 miles in six minutes.

The third tornado, also an EF2, touched down at 8:24 p.m. 2.8 miles southwest of Oakville, just east of the second one, traveling nearly parallel to the second tornado. 

That tornado damaged trees and the roof of a mobile home. It strengthened as it moved eastward down a bluff, destroying a pig farm building, downing a wooden high power transmission line and damaging another home and more trees before ending 1.3 miles from where it began after being on the ground for four minutes.

Philip said it is not uncommon for two tornadoes to spawn in the same area from the same storm.

"They call it a cyclic storm," Philip said. "It will form one (tornado) and then it diminishes and another will form."

Iowa has seen its fair share of severe weather this spring. In addition to torrential rainfall and record flooding, several rounds of storms have torn through the area. One storm system that came through the region May 27 dropped two tornadoes in southeast Iowa — an EF3 in Van Buren County and an EF1 in Lee County. A third, weaker tornado touched down that same day in Spring Grove, just south of Burlington, but it caused no damage.

Philip said it does not appear that this season is any more active than usual for southeast Iowa, however, and that, if anything, this year's tornado season got off to a late start due to a lingering winter and a later start to the spring, as well as cooler than usual temperatures.

May and June tend to be the peak months for tornadic activity. That activity tends to pick back up again as the seasons transition from summer to fall.