Fred Standa, the mayor of Mapleton, Iowa, was sitting on his porch Saturday watching the black cloud boiling up from the horizon when storm sirens blared a warning through town. Suddenly the cloud spit out a tornado funnel into the empty farmland.

“Like everyone says, it sounds like a freight train coming towards you,” he said. “But I didn’t wait around to listen.”

The tornado, which hit at 7:20 p.m. and was later identified as a Category 3 tornado with winds as high as 165 miles an hour, was the largest of 27 reported in Iowa on Saturday, said a spokesman for the National Weather Service. There were no fatalities.

The following day, seven tornadoes were reported in Wisconsin. One tore through a section of Merrill, destroying 50 to 60 buildings and scattering debris for miles, said Bob Odegard, the fire chief.

“We had to dig quite a few people out of their homes,” Odegard said. There were no serious injuries, he said.

But the damage was severe in Mapleton, a town of about 1,200 people in western Iowa. About 100 homes and many businesses were destroyed. Some of the old trees that gave the town its name were uprooted like weeds.

There were plenty of scrapes and bruises, but the only serious injury was a broken leg caused by falling debris, said Sheriff Jeffrey Pratt of Monona County. The lack of serious injury buoyed spirits, given that a tornado had killed four boy scouts near here three years ago.

The skies were bright blue on Monday as the community cleaned up the damage. One resident has already told city officials that he would use his insurance money to move elsewhere.