Tornado Friday June 10th 4:30 PM

This occured just one mile from our Manufacturg Plant in the little elevator town ~ Roelyn, Iowa

Part of the roof on the house is gone; This man was a good friend of my father and mother. He and my dad often went fishing and deer hunting together.

His wife and my mom worked together.

See the grain elevator in the background? That is Roelyn where we have Marshall Underwater Industries, Inc and Village Walk Chiropractic. I grew up in that little village.

In tribute to the passing of our President.

The barn was flattened and two very old trees ripped up.
Power lines down.

More later; I have to get to Fort Dodge (20 miles away) to pick up a very special DGer at the airport.

Arlene,

Boy, that's was too close for me. I glad to hear all is ok in your area.
Please give that special DG'er a big hug from me too.

Donna

Glad to hear that you are OK. Those are such scarey storms. We had specials on TV last week, featuring the story when, 20 years ago, one of the local towns was totally destoyed. I remember driving past, shortly after that-what a nightmare Barneveld was.
Hope that your visit is a wonderful one.

So glad to hear that you were OK, Arlene!!
We had a tornado hit our log home in 1996 six weeks after our farm auctions.
What a mess! Took Archies beloved shed and roof off of part of our house.
We would have been killed if we hadn't had a log home according to our insurance adjuster.
God is good!!

Maxine

Glad you came through it ok!

Wow, tornados are so scary... I guess because of the unpredictability. Glad you are okay...plus, I'd hate to miss meeting you at the KYRU!

Although NC is not tornado country, we actually had one last evening about 1 & 1/2 miles from me. We have trees down everywhere. Our newspaper is a weekly and there's no news coverage except for that so I don't know the particulars. only know that we had a tornado touch down because the ambulance & fire/rescue people were here (next door) last night for the elderly woman who had fallen.

This is what we went through yesterday at the farmers' market...it was quite terrifying, to say the least. I'm still shaky and unsettled from it. Kathy
http://davesgarden.com/t/437001/

I looked at this the other day and was just so upset by it that I couldn't find words to say. Only those of us who live in tornado alley understand the devestation a tornado can cause. In the Sedalia, MO area we have tonado warnings/watches almost daily for most of May & June. Along with each storm comes heavy rains. If the storms stay up high all we seem to get is the winds up to to 50-70 miles an hour and some rain but not the flooding type. We had a night like that last night.

Goodness Arlene that is too close for comfort! Glad you are okay. My husband and I were in Kansas City from Friday until this afternoon and heard about all the weather here in Iowa yet ANOTHER weekend. What is the deal with all these weekend storms! Again glad you're okay. Maridell

thanks megiold,

I was in no real danger; it was up high, dipped down and hit the farm; then bounced right back up. Strange, everything else was untouched. Even if I had been passing through a half hour earlier it wouldn't have touched me. It dropped down after it crossed over the blacktop and then bounced right back up.

I praise the Lord it didn't stay on the ground, because if it had ~it would have wiped out our mfg plant. We have people working for us that depend upon us for a living as well as good customers who would not like to wait for their product.

We were very blessed. Just felt so bad for the older gentleman whose farm got hit. He has to be about 80 and it was very unsettling for him. But neighbors around here will help him clean up and I will probably take meals to the workers. People here really look after each other.

A definate blessing that it was brief! That would have been horrible if it would have hit your plant, and I imagine that kind of job opportunity is kinda scare in the area. That dear man will also be blessed with all the help he will get and those workers are gonna get a pretty nice meal with you cooking! Take Care.

tornado june 13 sunday right after all the plant trades left all but a few of us!!!
we got the excitement of the tornado 2 miles away!!
thank God it was over b4 it got to our house!!!

Oh, gosh, Arlene - I just saw this thread. I am so glad your plant was not hit, too. Thank God no one was hurt. Something like that is so devastating to a community, let alone homes being destroyed. Who was your special DG'r?

GW, think you probably already figured it out.

http://davesgarden.com/t/436605/

TWC, I hope y'all have a great visit and I'm glad y'all are okay!

TC...

Sorry I got the date wrong; it was Friday June 11th!

CoCo comes to Iowa and the welcoming committee is getting to see the results of a tornado.

And CoCo's mother was taken with it as she knew the family when she was younger.

Wow, small world, huh? You're so lucky to meet CoCo, Arlene...And CoCo, you're so lucky to meet Arlene! Y'all are two of my favorite folks here.

Looks like we had a tornado touch down in a town further east in our county Monday morning. I didn't even know about it until I read the following news item from our local radio station's e-mail:

The National Weather Service confirms that a small tornado touched down early Monday morning near Brownsville in eastern Licking County. The F-1 tornado stretched for two miles and was approximately 75 yards wide. It hit around 12:15 Monday morning. The last confirmed tornado in Licking County was an F-2 that hit the Croton/Hartford area on
September 20th, 2000. That twister caused over $1-Million dollars in damages and killed 1-million chickens at the Buckeye Egg Farms in Croton. http://wclt.com

How much longer do you suppose we are going to have this stuff. Seems like it should be about over.

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Woah...Did you take those shots? Too close for comfort!

No, I didn't. Neighbors took them.

I was sitting at the stop sign one mile west of Roelyn, watching the sky and then tipped my head down listening to the radio, trying to decide if I should go check on the plant.

The radio led me to believe it had already been through our area, but this was another one.

Indecisive, I turned my head and was looking over at Roelyn,
trying to see if anything looked out of place. I really didn't want to take the time to drive over because I was tired and just wanted to get home.

I heard a funny noise and looked straight forward, but it had already popped down, hit, and then bounced up and disappeared. There was no time for me to grab my camera from the back seat, turn it on, point and shoot.

It couldn't have been on the ground but an instant and I wouldn't have known it had hit except for the funny noise!

So I crossed highway 20 and looked over at Neumans farm,
saw the broken trees and turned into his driveway. That's when I saw the roof of the house and the flattened barn.

I think had I been coming through 5 minutes earlier it still wouldn't have hit my car. The field on both sides was untouched.

But I don't know enough about tornados to know that.
I don't even know the wind speed of a tornado. I did hear about a storm on the radio that shifted from 25 MPH to 50 MPH in just minutes. They said the intensity was speeding up at an alarming rate.

(edited for spelling)

This message was edited Jun 16, 2004 12:46 PM

the pictures are pretty amazing!

Yesterday we had storm warnings again; this time tornados spotted 10 miles south of our home. I had to leave the house to go to a meeting and stepped out into a downpour. We got 2 1/2 inches in one hour.

So of course our entire county was on flood watch . . . and this part of Iowa is pretty much flat land. But there are enough dips in some of our blacktopped roads that rain like that can make them impassable if that rain would have continued.

Parts of Sioux City got 2-3 inches yesterday late morning. pretty hilly here so it generally ran off. But in some spots people got their car stranded in water. Will this weather change soon ? Pretty Please!

More rain here, and we just had one heck of a thunder and lightning show come through. This season makes me nervous.

Our house and farm got hit with one in '77 when I was a kid. It was by far the most memorable event of my childhood. I remember walking up from the basement and outside and wondering if I was in the right place. Twisted trees and debris laying everywhere and missing buildings made our home almost unrecognizable. The thing I remember most though is the outpouring of help from neighbors from miles around for weeks afterwords. Luckily there were only a couple of homes hit since it was mainly farm land and no injuries.

I am sure that your neighbor will appreciate the same thing; the help and support of friends, family, and neighbors with the cleanup.