Where to Start??

This has been an unbelievably violent and destructive spring for our area. Wide-spread flooding and almost nightly tornadoes continue to ravage.

Last night was no different.

We were warned pretty much all day yesterday that storms were going to form, again. I watched the NE part of the state get continually dark and the thunderhead flatten out. Lightening flashed and thunder rumbled in the distance. It was pretty windy throughout the day; gusting to over 40 mph.

For three hours we were under tornado warnings. The bizarre thing I noted about this storm as I was glued to the TV was that it kept growing; getting longer and wider. It was a slow moving line that continued to dump rain and amazing rates. Our house received 2.5" of rain in less than an hour. Our house had about 2 minutes of pea- and marble-sized hail.

The rainfall and storm conditions were described as a true tropical storm; huge drops, sheets of rain. The kind of rainfall seen, typically, along the Gulf. Our states are so saturated that the extra rain has nowhere to go but out of rivers and streams.

You think food prices are high now? Farmers can't get into their fields and if anything at all was planted it is more than likely washed away. Farmers are so far behind schedule and there's not one thing they can do about it.

Then this news story and later this article found on pretty much every major news station across the country came into the picture. A huge tornado touched down in Little Sioux, IA (about 40mi N of Omaha). There's a Boy Scout camp and there was a Leadership camp going on this week. 93 Scouts and 25 staff were up there this week. With little warning the tornado formed. Most sought shelter but a few were out hiking.

All buildings were destroyed.

48 injuries reported; 42 of those hospitalized at area hospitals in NE, IA, and SD. Creighton received four victims. Four teens, unfortunately, lost their lives when a brick shelter collapsed. The uninjured Scouts quickly mobilized into action, breaking into a storage shed to get an ATV and saws to start clearing away the debris and tending to those that needed medical attention. Iowa Governor Chet Culver hailed the Scouts as the true heroes.

I just found out that one of our Pulmonary nurse's had one of her sons at the camp. He's fine; incredibly shaken up, but, apparently, unharmed. Needless to say she didn't come into work today.

This afternoon I found this video on The Weather Channel.

Donate to the Red Cross; they are quickly running out of resources with all the storm damage in the region in the recent weeks.



And pray.