The One That Struck Parkersburg

The trailing edge of a still-formidable looking supercell covers the southeast horizon as seen from the front passenger-side window of our vehicle around 6:25 PM on Sunday, May 25, 2008. Less than an hour and a half earlier, this supercell produced an EF5 tornado that ravaged the town of Parkersburg, some 35 miles to the south of this location (along US Highway 18 one mile west of Floyd, Iowa). Leaving the fishing wildernesses of northeast Minnesota that morning, skies were overcast and the temperatures cool. Between Duluth and the Twin Cities the sun began to emerge and the humidity began to rise as instability grew. From the mix, a tornado touched down near St. Paul, Minnesota a couple of hours after we had passed the city, and we were (thankfully) too late for the Parkersburg event.