("Jay Honeck" wrote)
This is almost unbelievable, as just a few blocks away are scenes of utter
devastation. Menards is a shambles, and much of their buildingmaterials
are scattered around town. Our airport commission president's Dodge
dealership is gone. His cars are smashed flat, and his showroom is
splinters, with the roof laying across part of Riverside Drive. We were
at the meeting, huddled in the boiler room together, and now his business
is gone.

Down the road from us, our favorite Dairy Queen is simply gone. One of
the signs is still there, but the store itself is just no longer there.
And, being an 85 degree evening, there had to have been a bunch of
employees in there when the storm hit.

It's possible to draw a line from Menard's to the Dodge dealership, right
through the Dairy Queen, and into downtown proper. It missed our hotel by
a few hundred yards, at most.


VERY GLAD you and yours didn't get ...HIT!

Our scare was last year, hiding out with the cars in/under a local (cement)
Park and Ride ramp. Our townhouse garage was full of crap and we wanted to
hide the two cars from the anticipated hail. We had just pulled into the two
story parking structure, hiding behind a ramp, when it hit. Tornado went
north of us by about a half mile.

Tornado? WTF? We were listening to the radio....

Destruction (on the light side - roofs, trees, sheds, signs, campers, more
trees, etc) along its narrow two mile path, not much damage elswere in the
neighborhood. It lifted just north of ANE. We had branches down, that was
it.

Yours, tonight, sounds like a bad one. CNN has nothing on it yet.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all in the Iowa City area this evening.


Montblack
If you've never been around an evening tornado - the following day all you
hear is 14 hours of chain saws running.