EF-5

(When did they change the tornado scale??)

Parkersburg tornado was rated EF-5, which means winds of 200 mph. I can't imagine 200 mph, but there's a photo of a playing card lodged in a piece of wood here.

Aaron Kampman was slinging a chainsaw and the Ironman Battalion is on the ground, God bless them. The equipment manager from UIowa "said he will "help the people of Parkersburg" by providing tornado victims with Hawkeye T-shirts and jackets", adding insult to injury for at least half the town...

The lead story of today's Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier is "Don't worry, APHS sports are a priority." Which says a whole lot of unflattering things about both the paper and rural Iowa so I won't say them again.

OTOH: "Tornadoes play no favorites. Both green and red combines were destroyed Sunday." Heh. The crops will be fine, which is good because if I understand that last farm bill correctly the guys who planted them were going to get paid either way.

I'm waiting for Tom Harkin to blame global warming, as if tornados are a 21st-century phenomenon in Iowa, and propose the bill in the Senate that would confiscate all home air-conditioning systems that don't use ethanol, or something equally ridiculous.