Tornadoes & Blizzards

How do this man, blizzards, and a tornado go together? Read on and you will find out!
The handsome young farmer in the above photo is my father-in-law, back in the mid-1950's, shortly after he married Husband's mother. About ten years after the time of this photo, he miraculously survived a tornado.

Tornadoes are on my mind because of the news reports I've seen this morning of yesterday's killer tornadoes in the southern states. After seeing that, I'm grateful that Iowa simply has a blizzard right now. At least snow doesn't demolish buildings and lives. My thoughts and prayers are with those folks down south.

One afternoon in 1964, a tornado blew through the farmstead here where we live. Father-in-law was out in the barn, milking the cows; his wife and three boys went to the basement of the house when the storm blew up. When they emerged from there, they saw that the barn was gone. Only the cement-block-walled feed room corner remained.......and that's where Father-in-law was......he had fled to the safety of the feed room!

Amazingly, only a few cows were killed. The rest had to be herded across the road to the neighbor's barn to be milked. We've found a photo of the old barn, before it was destroyed, but regrettably, there are no photos of the aftermath of the storm. I'm sure the family was so overwhelmed with trying to deal with the rubble and mess that no one took pictures of it.

As I said, my thoughts and prayers are with all those in the path of the storms down south. Blogger Nannykim lives in South Carolina, I think, and Rhymes With Plague is down south, too. Country Girl is in Maryland. Husband has nephews in Tennessee. May God bless all these folks with safety.