At a Safe Distance from Parkersburg Supercell

I was returning home with friends from a fishing trip in northeast Minnesota on Tuesday, May 25, 2008, when our group began hearing reports that something bad had happened in Parkersburg, Iowa. And indeed it had. Around 5:00 that evening a churning EF5 tornado wrought destruction upon the town, killing six people. This was the view we saw of the trailing edge of the still very powerful looking storm system about an hour and a half after the Parkersburg event. This view looks southeast along US Highway 18, between Liberty and Montgomery streets in Floyd, Iowa.