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A Tornado in Iowa A Tornado in Iowa I was on my way back to Cedar Rapids from Wichita one Sunday afternoon last month, July. With me were the second team I brought from Texas - Dale and Annette. They are a couple originally from Houston, married and about my age. Wonderful people, as I got to know them in the next week. We were on our way to do flood relief work for the Methodist Church. This was my third trip; their first. Of course, the plan was to take I-35 north, through Kansas City, then to Des Moines, where we take a right turn on I-80 to Cedar Rapids. We never made it to Des Moines. I had seen several storms off to our left (west) as we passsed from Kansas into Missouri; we missed those, but I noted that some of the thunderheads were quite large. As we passed into Iowa, the weather got more and more cloudy; it began to look threatening to the north. Some background on me. I am a trained weather spotter with experience from my aviation days in the Navy and also as an amateur radio operator, where we assist in informing the public about bad weather conditions and in warning folks to take cover, protect livestock, etc. My instinct is to go away from or around storms, depending on how bad they are. I had to go against my instincts today. Even though I had never been to Des Moines before, I knew there would likely be a local weather net operating in conditions as this. With a little searching, I found the local frequency, and, sure enough the local weather net was active, with several fixed stations reporting conditions and looking at local radar tracks. I checked in. As a mobile station, I could be invaluable to spot and report bad weather: high wind gusts, heavy downbursts, hail, and even a tornado (God forbid). The weather was a heavy squall line north of Des Moines, and headed southeast at 35 mph. Typical stuff for Iowa. Just some moderate winds and rain reported so far. I elected to turn east off of I-35 well before getting to Des Moines. State road 92 seemed good - it headed east to a town called Indianola. Dale and Annette were right behind me in their vehicle; I was giving them updates via some little FRS walky-talkies I brought along. They were invaluable that day. The weather got worse, and we started hitting intermittent light showers. On high spots, I could see a solid front coming down from the north. The wall of rain looked solid black at 3 pm in the afternoon. It looked to be about 10 miles away. On the radio weather net, the operators started talking about hail and high wind gusts, say up to 50 mph, inside the center of Des Moines. I was getting concerned. The light show of cloud-to-cloud lightning crackeled impressively on all my radios. I called Dale on the FRS and asked if he wanted to turn around. He said press on, but gun it. So, we went as fast as we could, still in relatively good conditions. But when we got close to Indianola, we got behind a very slow farm tractor going at most 30 mph. Frustratingly slow; couldn’t pass because of the curvey nature of the road there. Shower activity started picking up. Back in Texas, we would be cheering this weather, it ahd been so dry and hot. But this part of the country had already seen too much weather in the last few months. At this point, I started hearing reports of a ‘hook echo’ on the radar via the ham operators in Des Moines. Now a hook echo is bad news. That is where the worst weather occcurs in a squall line: highest winds, hail, and possibly even a tornado. This is to be avoided, to put it mildly. I began making mental prepartions to take cover. I said a prayer. After finally passing through the little town of Indianola, we continued east on Highway 92. I spotted a church off my left with its lights on. Then the weather broke on us, the heavens parted and it began raining - huge, cascading buckets of rain. It was raining cats, dogs, elephants, and giraffes. You might throw in a hippo, too. I stopped, and turned around for that lighted church, which turned out to be Lutheran. The Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church of Indianola, to be precise. I parked as close as I could, and dashed inside, getting totally drenched in the process. Not sure an umbrella would have done much good -- it was raining almost horizontally then. A couple of folks were inside - seemed to be preparing a meal in their kitchen. It was about 4 pm. I asked if we could take shelter, and they said sure, and would we like to stay for dinner? So, I ran outside again, and waved my team inside and we stayed there, at Mt Calvary Lutheran Church, for the next two and a half hours. We dried off with small hand towels, but that worked. They were listening to the weather on the radio also, and it seemd that all the really bad stuff was about ten miles to the north east, near I-80. Right where we were headed. Now the meal was being prepared for the public; Indianola hosts a big balloon festival every year at this time, and the church is near the open fields where this takes place, so they open their doors for a hungry public and sell a few Tee Shirts and things to make a little money. We all bought a Mt. Calvary Tee-Shirt, naturally. The meal itself was typical summer fare -- hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, and bug juice (grape koolaid). But the desert was to die for. It was home made Rhubarb - berry pie, topped with two scoops of home made vanilla ice cream. It seemed certain we had entered the Kindom of Heaven at that point. We were truly grateful. The Lutheran took this all in stride; quite normal for them. We got on our way, and caught up with a bit of the trailing edge of those storms, but nothing really bad. Saw a rainbow as we got up to I-80. And then we noticed the path across the interstate where the tornado had crossed. Trees down right and left, going right across I-80. Perhaps an F zero or F 1. I said a prayer of thanks as we proceeded, uneventfully, to Cedar Rapids. What an adventure. Cirq |
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Thanks, folks. I think I've had enough adventures for a while. Back to work, then...
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