Friday, April 14, 2006

Here I thought that Washington, IA was tornado alley...

Confirmed F2 Tornado Struck City - Metro
IC suffers at least $3M in damages - Metro

One time, long ago, I had to sit in the dark in a hallway of the Old Capitol Mall with a bunch of other people, because 75+ mile an hour winds were wreaking havoc in the streets of Iowa City and Coralville.

It was pretty scary, but the resultant damage wasn't too bad.

Power was down for about 5 hours, streets were flooded, and the street traffic was being regulated by the Iowa National Guard.

A train crossing the Iowa River on a narrow bridge was about half derailed, dangling cars into the murky nitrate-ridden depths of the river itself.

Limbs blew down everywhere, about a third of the trees on campus turned instantaneously turned into scrap lumber and firewood, but there was very little property damage beyond a few banged up car and some flooding.

Damn, I'm glad that I moved the hell out of there.

We don't really get the whole tornado thing here by the lake.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My mom called me up with the tornado news...not much beyond "lots of damage". Did anyone die? No. Any relatives get hurt? No. It lacked a zing.

Iowa City, I loved you once.

I was reading an internet thing about the safest place to live from Mother Nature's wrath. (http://www.slate.com/id/2126321/)

Their mostly-scientific conclusion was Storr, CT.