Last night about 1:30 am I awoke to the power blinking off and on and finally off for good. I went downstairs to find a battery radio to find out what was going as it was an evening of many tornadoes and we’re all a bit edgy after Parkersburg. The lightning was very intense and I had a bad feeling that a huge line of storms was heading our way after taking out a power line to our west – but before I could wake up everyone else, the storm hit and we scrambled into the basement – when I got into Emma’s room to fetch her, the open window on the south side of the house blew rain all the way across the room to the opposite side of the room! Any window that was open even 1/4 inch on the south side let in a torrent of water and it was so intense it even leaked through the floor and dripped out of the ceiling in the living room.
We huddled and found out a tornado was in the neighborhood less than a few miles away. I didn’t sleep very well the rest of the night and when we surveyed damage this morning, here’s what we found.
Our biggest casualty was this 60 foot spruce tree just north of Claire’s bedroom and near Martin’s playground. When we saw the big hole in the sky out Claire’s window at night, we new something was up. We shined our flashlights out and saw the tree had fallen. Claire was a bit shaken, thinking the tree could have fallen on her while sleeping!
Our one and only summer apple tree that bears fruit in July is also a victim of the storm. The chair was by the garage, about 50 feet away when we went to bed.
Maizie’s doghouse also got blown away a bit.
This is most interesting to me – we had placed black landscape fabric between our tomatoes and covered them with heavy hog panels – the wind picked the panels up off the ground and wrapped one around some tomato stakes. I literally sunk in 4-5 inches in the mud in the garden.
Even the hay wagon was kind enough to blow up from its usual resting place by the barn to up near the fallen apple tree to aid in cleanup! We were lucky the shed doors didn’t blow off, but they did blow out on the bottom.
The ground is littered with fruit that was ripped off the trees. These are cherries.
This white pine looks a lot different than it did yesterday – it looks like all of last year’s needles were stripped off the tree and mainly this year’s clumpy new growth were undamaged.
We weren’t the only ones – here’ s the view at a neighbor’s directly 1 mile east of us – they lost this pine and others as well.
Our neighbors immediately to our north had the most hassle as one branch is resting on the house, another limb took out a power line and they lost some shingles and siding as well.
Here’s a picture of nothing! You can see the cement forms which were part of a cattle feeder that usually has a building over the top of it – the cement remains and the building is gone. This is on the blacktop about a mile away near the big curve on E63.
Some of it is up to 3/4 of a mile away – the wreckage is strewn throughout the field – the farmstead that it came from is in the distance.
This barn was in sorry state before, but now it’s worse!
The pile of lumber to the left was in the garage, part of which is on the right! This is at the first house immediately to our north.
A part of an outbuilding roof ended up on the roof of another shed on this place, just about a half mile away. Right now we are feeling grateful and heard from our neighbor at the Sheriff’s Office that they think it was a tornado that didn’t quite touch the ground.
You may be wondering about the wind turbine – it’s up and running this morning!
one year ago…”Farm View Series #2 SE Corner”
  
 
The Iowa State University Museum had old clothes for kids to try on and play. (Sorry you can’t see Emma’s full length evening gown).
The crew soaking wet and happy shows summer!
