An Iowa Garden

Today was stiflingly hot for mid-April, with a strong wind from the Southwest that continued to increase all day so that the temperature also continued to rise, reaching 88 degrees in late afternoon, with high clouds then rapidly flowing like milk across the horizon from the west, giving the sky a ground glass appearance, with the wind becoming fitful and dusty; never a good sign in spring on the prairies, where the jet stream high overhead can rip into the rapidly rising hot air, pushing mushrooming storms eastward at sixty miles an hour, setting them spinning as they go. The tornado sirens all around us began sounding off all at once, and continued their frantic wailing for the next hour. The first storm on radar showed a heart of purple in a large red blob. Hail began beating on the roof, as continuous lightning backlit low, dark clouds racing along the ridge. Tornadoes tend to form on the southwest corner of these storm clusters, and fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Iowa City just to our south, this was no exception, as a tornado ripped right across the city about four miles from us. The hail became even worse with the downdraft at the back of the storm, then trailed off to just scattered drumbeats, but ominously, lightning continued to flicker, and the temperature had not really dropped with the passage of the storm; it was still warm and humid. The tornado sirens continued, now joined by a multitude of emergency vehicle sirens out there in the darkness. A second storm then raced in from the northwest with the speed of a fast car, bringing quarter sized hail and even worse lightning, and at least two more tornadoes then swept through, following almost the same pathway right across town. Roofs are off, many buildings torn asunder, trees down, cars are flipped, but thankfully no deaths reported, and miraculously, less injuries than you might expect, but damage will be in the millions. I do not know what our garden will look like in the morning; the early magnolias all in full bloom, the soft foliage of thousands of newly emerging plants... but it's a small matter.