Tornado

The south side of Malden got hit by a tornado last night.  I live on the north end and was thus unscathed, but it was still pretty intense.  One of my friends had her house pretty torn up, and several others lost EVERYTHING.  They lived in trailers and the tornado flipped their trailers over.  Up here on the north end we lost power for an hour and a half, but nothing serious.  Here's what my friend's house looks like; it was a very pretty house and as y'all can see, it's very badly damaged.  Photos are not mine; when I find out who took these I'll credit them.

She had that back room set up so nicely!  I hate knowing that she got hit so hard and I hope the damage can be repaired.  On the good side, she herself was not injured and has a place to stay.  Hallelujah for that.

Today Mama and I went out to gawk, as people will do when something big happens in town.  Everything from...oh, I'll say Main Street south has been blocked off to keep crowds away and for safety concerns.  This picture was taken by me, used with permission of me.

Praise God for Malden's police force.  We've got some superb men on the beat.  They were polite to everyone, but they couldn't let us in because we didn't live out that way.  More than fair enough.

My curmudgeonly great-aunt has a farm south of town, so we went that way to see if we could see anything.  This is what we found.

The toppling of an irrigation system would be rated F1 on the old scale, and probably EF1 on the current scale.  For the layman, F1 and EF1 are the lowest ratings on the Fujita scale and the enhanced Fujita scale, respectively.  Nevertheless, an EF1 tornado is still a tornado, and the damage in town suggests stronger winds than EF1.  First Uncle thinks we'll get a 3 rating, but...we'll see.  More pictures of honest-to-God damage can be found HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE; I'll let y'all see for yourselves.

I (and indeed, the whole town) owe a big fat THANK YOU to KAIT's weather department for keeping us in the know.  They were live-streaming the whole thing despite some minor damage to their own building, providing warnings and radar and...well, EVERYTHING in a timely fashion.  KFVS, our station to the north, said absolutely nothing about the mess, and as far as I know they still have not said anything.  This has happened before, believe it or not; KFVS follows everything that happens in Illinois, but nothing on this end of the viewing area.  The folks in Illinois are important too, no question about that, but in this case WE were the ones who got hit hard.  KFVS's coverage of this tornado and the one that hit Caruthersville twelve years ago were like night and day, though in the defense of KFVS, the tornado that hit Caruthersville was a lot worse than this one.  Nevertheless, KFVS dropped the ball and KAIT picked it up.  I'm grateful to KAIT for that.

As far as I know there were no fatalities, and no looters have been caught yet, so that's good news.  I'll keep y'all posted on any updates.

Yours always,
RagingMoon1987