Severe storms just missed us

It was a dark and stormy night, or evening I should say, here in Waterloo, Iowa. Well, for those in northeast Iowa who live close to us it was, anyway.

At least two major tornadoes in our area took lives and caused a lot of damage yesterday, and some severe thunderstorms added to the drama.

From our perspective, it was all very weird... even somewhat eery. We could hear the warning sirens. We had our radio and TV on, and they were telling us to take cover immediately. We could see a huge DARK RED area on the radar (severe weather) just millimeters to the north of us (on the TV screen) and also southwest of us. In reality the south part of the severe weather system was about 4 miles north of us, and extended 20+ miles to the north. A 1/2 mile wide tornado was tearing across the land just out of our sight. However, right where we were at the sky was only somewhat overcast - it was actually mostly clear - and it was only a tad bit breezy. Again, from our perspective it was kind of surreal. If not for the radar on TV, we would have thought they were crazy to be telling us that all of this was actually happening.

But the sad part is that just 30 to 60 minutes prior to all of this, a larger tornado had ripped through the south part of a small town - Parkersburg, Iowa (1.1 square miles, population approx. 1,800) - that is about 30 miles west of us, and it destroyed 1/3 of the town. I'm not sure of the death toll, due to varying reports, but the highest number I heard was that there were four fatalities in Parkersburg.

I found out this morning that a guy I graduated with was living in Parkersburg. He and his family were able to get to the basement on time, and only suffered nicks and bruises, but their house was destroyed. They are going to be staying with his parents in another town for a week, but after that they're not sure what they're going to do - because his parents just sold their house and bought a house in Parkersburg that they were planning on moving into next week - and it was also destroyed in the tornado.

Other surrounding towns were also affected. We drove by lots of uprooted trees in Cedar Falls, a city that borders our city. An RV dealership had lots of damage. We drove by it today and saw RV's that were flipped upsidedown and smashed into each other. A woman from nearby New Hartford (another small town that also suffered much damage, and two deaths) reported that her horses had gotten loose and she was having trouble locating them.

Apparently this made national news because while we were gone today to be with friends, my brother, who lives in San Diego, called and left a message, checking to see if we were ok because he had seen reports on the news.

The calm after the storm is what's even more eery. To drive by the places that were hit hard was such an odd sight to see, when it was such a perfect day today - sunny, calm, mid to upper 70's. Some people were out grilling, some people were boarding up what was left of their property.