Final thoughts (I hope) on the tornadoes

Last night I had to quit my tornado path tracking because it was starting to get dark. Today I found that I could track it a bit further. After making a mess in the woods just north of the CenturyLink building behind the Rensselaer Care Center, it crossed the ditch and then the highway, and hit the farm house that is east of the high school and on the west side of the river across from Laird's Landing. I could not see if it had done any structural damage, but it had uprooted one tree and it appeared to have damaged two others.

I could not see where it hit the line of trees on the banks of the river. Perhaps if I had walked up the river from Laird's Landing I would have seen something, but there are limits to my curiosity.

According the the Rensselaer Republican, there was other storm damage in the Paar area and somewhere along Bunkum Road.

Chad's Weather blog said that there were four tornadoes in Jasper and Newton Counties on Wednesday. The strongest was an EF2 that was near Mt Ayr. A second started near Memory Gardens east of the Interstate and did not quite make it to the radio station. A third is the one I have written about. It started near Lake Banet and ended west of Laird's Landing. I am not sure if the damage in College Woods was caused by this tornado or if it was other winds from the storm.

I do not see how the river float scheduled for this Saturday can take place. Not only will the river be too high, but there is danger of trees blocking the channel.

Planting has been running late this year, and the rains of the past week will delay it for several more days. The corn that has been planted is emerging. However, if it emerges to a temporary lake, it may have to be replanted. There is water in many fields, though not usually as much as is shown in the picture below. The photo below was taken from the Marion School Road looking east toward Pleasant Ridge.

I think this blog hit an all-time record number of daily visitors yesterday, when it had over 1200 visits. Anything over 200 is a good day, and anything below 100 is a slow day.

Addendum: I found that the saturated soil makes it easier to pull out the little trees that have popped up in places where I do not want them. Some of them I have cut down for several years, and now they have very big roots compared to their growth above ground.