Palmer, Iowa
8 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1954 and the latest in 1984. It stands in Bellville Township. It lies in ZIP code area 50571. The Survey maps it on the Palmer quadrangle. 138 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,240 feet above sea level.
Population over time
2 figuresPalmer fell from 165 to 138 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.
| Year | People | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 165 | |
| 2020 | 138 | -27 (-16%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
5 surveys from 8 printed sheetsMatched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.
- 1954 USGS Fort Dodge quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
- 1957 USGS Fort Dodge quadrangle1:250000
- 1958 USGS Fort Dodge quadrangle1:250000
- 1979 USGS Palmer quadrangle1:24000
- 1984 USGS Humboldt quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
Fires near this place
6 since 2005Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 6 fires within 5 miles of Palmer between 2005 and 2009, burning about 72 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 6 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 April 2008 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 60 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 19 March 2009 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 2.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 7 November 2005 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 10 acres | Iowa State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 3 November 2005 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Iowa State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 2 November 2005 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Iowa State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 10 November 2005 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Iowa State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Storms near this place
23 since 1998Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Palmer in 23 storm reports between 1998 and 2024: 14 hail, 4 thunderstorm wind, 3 tornado, 2 funnel cloud. The reports record 1 injury. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 2022 | Tornado (EF2) | Palmer | 1 hurt, $150,000 | Tornado developed a few miles east northeast of Palmer and moved northeast to north for the entire path. The tornado destroyed a farm buildings and also snapped several power poles producing the EF2 rating. Otherwise, much of the path was in rural cropland with a large dust cloud enveloping the tornado for much of its life. |
| September 1998 | Hail | Palmer | $35,000 | no account filed |
| July 2000 | Thunderstorm Wind | Palmer | $15,000 | no account filed |
| June 1998 | Thunderstorm Wind | Palmer | $15,000 | no account filed |
| March 2006 | Thunderstorm Wind | Palmer | $10,000 | no account filed |
| August 2002 | Thunderstorm Wind | Palmer | $10,000 | no account filed |
| June 2011 | Hail | Palmer | $3,000 | Half inch diameter hail and two inch tree limbs broken by wind. |
| June 2011 | Hail | Palmer | $2,000 | Mostly quarter size with a few larger. Crop damage reported. |
| May 2004 | Hail | Palmer | $2,000 | no account filed |
| May 2004 | Hail | Palmer | $2,000 | no account filed |
| July 2009 | Hail | Palmer | $1,000 | no account filed |
| May 2005 | Hail | Palmer | $1,000 | no account filed |
| August 2003 | Hail | Palmer | $1,000 | no account filed |
| April 2024 | Tornado (EF0) | Palmer | $200 | Storm chaser had video of entire life cycle of tornado. The tornado developed on the edge of a farmstead producing minor tree damage. The tornado continued northeast through rural farmland before turning northwest. The tornado remained in open farmland for the remainder of its path before dissipating. |
| December 2021 | Tornado (EFU) | Palmer | - | This tornado moved through both Pocahontas and Humboldt Counties. Tornado path found via high resolution satellite imagery and radar data. No damage was reported, hence the EFU rating. The tornado passed just west and north of Gilmore City, entering into Humboldt County north of Gilmore City. |
| July 2020 | Funnel Cloud | Palmer | - | Multiple reports via social media of a funnel cloud southeast of Pocahontas and southwest of Gilmore City. |
| April 2017 | Hail | Palmer | - | Trained spotter reported pea to nickel size hail in Palmer. |
| August 2021 | Funnel Cloud | Palmer | - | no account filed |
| May 2004 | Hail | Palmer | - | no account filed |
| June 2004 | Hail | Palmer | - | no account filed |
| June 2004 | Hail | Palmer | - | no account filed |
| July 2000 | Hail | Palmer | - | no account filed |
| September 1998 | Hail | Palmer | - | no account filed |
Nearest settlements
The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blanden (historical) | 4.2 miles | 9 | |
| Westview | 4.5 miles | 8 | |
| Lizard (historical) | 4.7 miles | 8 | |
| Rusk | 7.6 miles | 8 | |
| Pocahontas | 8.1 miles | 8 | |
| Rolfe | 13.2 miles | 8 | |
| Rubens Siding | 13.2 miles | 8 | |
| Fonda | 13.4 miles | 9 |
Elsewhere
Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.
| Wikipedia article on Palmer | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q1926415 | The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0). |
Provenance
This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 459998. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.




