The Iowa Derecho: In Their Own Words (Real-Time Documentary)

all right here's the strong winds we are just in the core now we lost the window interest doesn't stop numerous winds of 90 miles an hour greater several reports damage it is going into the cedar rapids metro area into downtown [Music] foreign [Music] williamsburg around 12 15 new hall around 1220 vinton around 12 30 cedar rapids around 12 30 to 12 45 it was just watching all of it unfold to our west and knowing that was coming this way but not really knowing what it was going to do we didn't know anything about directio coming this way saw something come across about a severe thunderstorm warning so i was kind of keeping my eye on the outside i started uh texting some of my my friends who are also spotters maybe we had discussed like maybe somebody mentioned in the locker room uh maybe i made sure i grabbed my raincoat i want to give you a look outside right now because you can already see the big shelf cloud here in the distance it is a wall of water it's essentially a hurricane over iowa again we had that reported gust of 99 miles an hour in the marshalltown area the storm going through marshalltown was kind of our last signal before it got into our area getting the wind measurements out of there and the severe reports really set us up for our expectations of what was going to happen in eastern iowa saw a aaa email come across saying marshalltown had 98 mile an hour winds and i had to close my mouth because it didn't look that bad outside but then our power flickered five times that i know of and i grabbed myself and went downstairs about noon i decided to head to my spot which is located on quiver court just off boysen road and just west of albernet road in mary and it's it's got a perfect 360 degree uh clear view of the sky the first inkling we had was um i got an email that we since our daughter was headed off to school we were all going up to get covet tests and we got an email from uh from chest iowa saying hey if there's there's potentially bad weather this afternoon and if that's the case they'll have to reschedule testing uh we had a truck out here uh we're replacing some parts on it and washing it uh maintenancing it and we decided to uh grab some lunch we went into the office area um zach and i stayed because we brought our lunch with us and my cousin mike he went to town to grab some we saw a little bit of a storm warning coming my parents had texted me and said there was a bad storm on the way and we thought we didn't really hear much about it so we kind of ignored it monitoring the storm on radar through much of the day and it was holding its own not only was it holding its own but it was intensifying um it was my intention then not to go out to meet it or you know to chase it so i opted to stay within less than a mile from my home we didn't expect anything coming and we weren't paying attention to radios and uh weather forecasts at that point yeah we'll go back in third and we'll go uh east now instead of west now we're gonna play a game we're trying to stay ahead of this thing yeah it really is a game of cat mouth we were in the process myself and our hr director tammy wise she was helping me call the county offices i was calling all the cities letting them know if you have people outside please get them inside have them take cover get their outside things buttoned up things put away people back indoors and just as we were getting the last community called in the last county office called the wind just came in i was looking out the door off to the south and everything looked green so i knew something was going to happen probably a lot bigger event than what we were even anticipating uh we were watching channel 2 on on the tv in the office in the shop and we eventually ended up losing satellite coverage and so we kind of relied on our phone for some apps and radar and things like that and we just didn't really think i mean we study the weather being farmers we we watch it every single day and it just did not seem like it was going to be that severe until it came pretty much out of nowhere and i headed to the toledo fire station which was just right across the street all the responders were out i asked them what they needed and it was kind of one of those things where we don't know what we need yet so i just let them know you know contact me on the radio contact me on cell phone i immediately called the state because we call state duty officer to let them know we've had a significant event we don't exactly know what resources we need yet but we've had a significant event we will be calling for resources at some point in time so we are racing the storm right now on highway 30 i thought the storm would be a little bit more photogenic and right now just wanted to give you an update on things you may hang here for a little bit just to give warning to the control booth back there but we have a very intense thunderstorm that is ongoing right now there have been reports of substantial damage around tama around tama county and the national weather service is saying winds are possibly near 100 miles an hour or higher we had been doing several cut-ins prior to the noon newscast i went in and i was like you get those wind gusts that are coming into the metro if they're up at 70 miles per hour yeah you should probably hang with it uh and it was so far away it was still seemingly so far away that it felt like maybe this was too much to keep with it progressively we were realizing when we were getting those wind reports of 90 miles per hour even 100 mile per hour at some point that this was a serious storm and i think even just looking at the warnings while you felt in control because people were getting notified to some level of that there was a severe thunderstorm warning it covered basically the whole state at one point and so how do you even try to explain what this is and what the destruction can do it was rapidly evolving really hour by hour every hour the intensity of the storm increased the outlook for severe weather increased we were playing catch-up with that storm pretty much all morning long and then we reached noon and the warning started entering our counties and that's when it was like all right what's done is done you know now it's time to kind of do our job and trying to warn the public 91 miles an hour showing up in some spots 66 i mean we have just incredibly incredibly intense thunderstorms all right hello youtube it's august 10th 2020. the year that just never ceases to maze is continuing to amaze we've got mcv coming in with 100 mile an hour confirmed winds west of me here in toledo which is tama county right now we're right on the leading edge of this storm we are just north of bell plain by van horn racing back east on 30. i don't know how well you can see it but the corn in the foreground is almost being knocked completely to the ground very intense winds now racing down highway 30 there's a lot of leaves flying through the air a lot of damage look at all the leaves and debris flying through the air right now the core of those winds upwards of 100 miles per hour probably about a mile or two behind us but it was a gorgeous day and i had in just a normal iowa day nice a nice actually iowa day yeah we got there uh we got there about mid i think about midday and um you know um we were hiking up uh you know there's there's some gorgeous bluffs there along the cedar river it was a weekday morning so it wasn't so busy that day and we probably had 15 20 campers in the campground and maybe 15 vehicles in the park at the time but we had been turning cars away from the park all morning because we were cutting trees that were falling down over the main road so that was really a saving grace to some extent possibly for some people out here it looks like there's a pretty good indication of very intense winds just northwest of belle plain west of bel plain keystone area right now and this is coming right towards cedar rapids so cedar rapids we've been telling you you need to take these storms very very seriously uh these storms will pack quite the punch again we're talking wind gusts upwards of 100 miles per hour and we're already seeing indications of that on the very leading edge rebecca yeah and nick we've gotten reports now in marshall county of a 106 mile an hour wind gusts now we have uh this warning now sarah for linn county for cedar rapids is for 90 mile an hour winds this is for 90 mile an hour when so folks we're staying here we have a very very intense thunderstorm this is i'm treating this as if this is a tornado warning then we get a report of 106 mile per hour winds confirmed and then it's like well we need to stay with this and the fact that it was moving at 70 miles per hour that it then ended up in cedar rapids about 20 minutes later but the fact that we were getting these the confirmed reports of 100 miles per hour wind gusts that i mean unbelievable really so that's what's coming our way we've got a nice boeing segment and we're going to be kind of uh on the northern peak of it and that's where the strongest winds tend to be we walked outside to see it as it was coming over the hill back there and all of a sudden the temperature dropped about 25 degrees it seemed i mean enough to give you goosebumps and we thought there's something wrong here and the sky started to make like a low-pitched noise kind of a you know like they say like a freight train and we thought well we'll just go back inside and finish our lunch if we didn't know what was coming and again there's likely incredible wind uh behind us as well we're starting to get closer to those more intense wind gusts rabbit's rabbits iowa city this is an incredibly intense thunderstorm and is ongoing right now and when everything started crashing down we ducked underneath the trailer here and we were laying right in between the tires there with a couple dogs and we kind of hunkered down and hoped for the best somehow we fit two of us and two dogs together underneath in between those tires to protect ourselves the trailer ended up keeping the rafters from falling on us and retaining everything so i guess it was about the only place we had left to go building completely rained down on top of that truck all the way around us i mean we were laying in a couple inches of water it was really uncomfortable but you know it saved us that truck saved our lives it felt like the world had ended out here i could hear the screeching of the metal and i'm assuming that that was taking the metal off the tops of the bins and the machine shed i could hear things scrunching for a long time like like you were moving metal across the cement and actually that did happen um it you'd hear a lot of screeching and then just bang on the ground i'm guessing the house shook i wasn't sure that the house was going to still be there when i came up by the basement from all the sound and it it was a good 40 minutes it was a good 40 minutes of not being able to to get in touch with someone i mean i i called my son and see the rapids i sit ahead for the basement now he hadn't heard anything so he did now we're on highway 30. we're near the van horn area and we are all right here's the strong winds we are just in the core now all right jason if you want to pull over safely you can do so we are now in the core of really intense winds we got a big burst right there you can see we're going probably about 40 to 50 and you can see the wind is going faster than we are the rain's going faster than we are intense wind with this storm right now i could probably see leaves flying through the air that's debris flying through the air as well uh jason let me get you a good crossroad here as soon as i can um we got a road coming up and again you can see really intense wind happening with this storm we got cars this car is just in in oncoming traffic i don't know what this guy is doing wow okay because i don't know what that was but that was big problems we got debris flying up the road with us right now no i've been storm chasing for more than a decade and i've seen so many extremes in weather but this was the first time that i felt like i really lost control of the situation there was nowhere that we could go to be safer we tried to do everything that we could to be safe when we were out there we kind of got on the downside of a hill try to get some protection that way we had a line of trees a bit off to our west that acted a bit like a wind break we didn't have any buildings like sheds that would come apart in destructive winds we tried to do everything that we could to be as safe as we could out there how fast the wind is going right now a really really intense wind with the storms that moves down highway 30. uh right now we are right near van horn this is coming right towards you in cedar rapids very intense wind is flying with the storm right now so i checked the weather religiously obviously being index standing and so i knew there's like a 60 chance of rain in the afternoon so no big deal we were working inside so it's totally fine but we saw really dark clouds coming in from the west i had a friend from des moines check in saying there's a serious storm coming but i thought like a little bit of thunderstorm some lightning nothing too crazy um i just remember the skies being you know kind of this light gray as you know you can see maybe there might be rain coming and i knew there was some storms coming but nothing like we got headed down to tama and driving along highway 63 heading south just seeing buildings blown across the road trailers flipped over in the casey's parking lot trees down lines down people trying to drive under power lines around power lines cars hung up in them ems couldn't get to the to the north into town they couldn't get to the south into town we had lines down so this was a large scope that we knew as tema county we had to respond to on our own because mutual aid was not going to be a possibility because marshall county got hit powersheet county got hit benton county got hit we didn't know what was going on up in black county county so this was something we had to rely on our own i've seen so many reports of these homes and built businesses and buildings being damaged and unfortunately i mean there's going to be so much loss on these crops too so this is right along highway 30 this is coming to the east incredibly quickly and it is going to be an intense period of strong winds as it comes to the east here so this is the situation very very dangerous thunderstorm if you do not have to be out then please stay inside and you want to just be away from the windows is going to be the key thing here as we're dealing with these intense thunderstorms that are going to produce winds of 80 90 maybe even higher in terms of in terms of the wind speeds i think it was still so hard to really comprehend what the storm was actually doing it was still really difficult to wrap your head around it i don't think any four years of school can set you up for what that storm was like and so i think we all felt a little out of control not seeing how rapidly this storm intensified over just a couple of hours sirens are going off [Music] hmm [Music] the sirens went off and they went on for a while and then stopped that's like looking around going what's this for because it was once again it's just just as my son said overcast gray sky i thought i don't see anything after all the sirens and what you know weather radio went off things calmed down so i come up to check on these guys i thought that the sirens were probably freaking them out they they probably never heard anything like that before so i would be if i was in so i wanted to come check on we were hiking up uh you know there's there's some gorgeous bluffs there along the cedar river um you know just walking along the trail and we got sort of to a certain point and started hearing uh sirens in the distance um and was like huh that's that's usually a good sign when you're when you're out at the state park to turn around and so we started hiking back uh towards the car this is insane well that's i don't know if they can actually hear me that was 90. very very we lost the window we lost the back window okay so we're gonna if you guys can take next mic down we're gonna we're gonna let them uh make sure they get to somewhere safe but in an incredibly intense thunderstorm is coming through if you know anyone who's on the roads right now and that can get off of the roads that are on anywhere from around i-380 south of what waterloo to cedar rapids on highway 30 151 [Music] [Applause] measured a wind gust of just over 90 miles an hour and then the back right window in our vehicle blew out so at that point we're really trying to assess well what can we do in this situation okay shoot yeah we're good we lost the window [Music] but it looks like it's getting even worse out there i mean that is incredibly strong he said 92 mile an hour winds uh and possibly higher than that it looks like that they were going up the second window that was right behind my head blew out and it showered me with glass and cut up my hand pretty good as well the gust got stronger with time and this wasn't 5-10 minutes this went on for 30 to 45 minutes we measured 99 before we had to shut everything down and we by far saw stronger wind gusts in the following 10 15 minutes okay i hear the last of the wheel and shutting down here they they send off the uh the activation tone like five times there they usually do a three this is an ugly swarm that you saw coming in this is the ugliest i've seen in a really really long time more central iowa after this storm passed through and it really hasn't weakened over the past couple minutes or really the hour at that and still getting tons of reports we're seeing a lot of things on twitter of power lines down it is expected that lots of areas are going to lose power here shortly as the storm continues to progress over there we're seeing lots of trees down really these winds are hurricane force winds i know nick mentioned that before but it seems like most reports are coming in 70 to 85 miles per hour but we have had some gusts upwards of 100 miles per hour so yeah i mean we've had we've had multiple reports of these incredibly intense winds and we've seen people sending these photos of i mean here's a business in urbandale so around the des moines area several trees down and the roof off of the building there so this is just going to continue to get worse we still have i mean we we can even still see some of the sun poking through probably in parts of cedar rapids but there's clouds starting to move in now we have the um we are going to start to see this get very intense in the cedar rapids area in the next um just matter of minutes the next 10 to 15 minutes if anyone does have a any dot cameras or anything like that any of the cameras like that that we can see along this storm then we can also look at at that situation and see how things are going can we just take nick's picture we don't necessarily oh we don't have next picture so they had very very intense winds going on there and they are going to hopefully get out of the worst of that shortly here but we have these strong winds that have been in excess of 90 miles an hour moving into the cedar rapids area and going to come through linn county right now so nick is saying peak gusts to 92 miles an hour and we in the van horn area sustained at 70 miles an hour morengo has 60 mile an hour winds and that that's kind of on the southern side where it's a little bit weaker so you know around the cedar rapids williamsburg iowa city areas that's really where i'm seeing the bigger concerns right now and even in some of these thunderstorms up to the north 50 60 mile an hour winds have been going on so just an incredible amount of damage has been ongoing storm chasers in marshall county marshalltown saying estimated winds of 90 to 100 miles an hour and that is just upsetting after they've coming pretty much standby [Applause] a quick reminder of things before we get started here we have multiple mornings in multiple areas in particular we do not need any fair weather reports and we do not need these siren reports whereas the sirens have gone off [Applause] [Applause] we do have an incoming storm it does this warning was raised a few counties away because it was that strong we are looking at radar indicated [Music] here [Applause] so if we can take the skycam in coralville right now you can see the thunderstorm starting to approach the skies are getting dark the emergency managers may be putting the sirens out a couple of times this is for these thunderstorms producing winds of 70 miles an hour or greater this will do more widespread damage than what we will get with a with just a tornado unfortunately because we're not talking about just one singular thing we're talking about a big swath big area so i'm going to try and pull up some dot cameras too and try and see if we can get some other views of what's happening in the area because this is not here but we do have some very intense winds going on okay so if you guys can take my weather scan due this is you can see people are stopped in the area highway 30 county home road v66 this is in benton county the camera is rocking they're just cars totally stopped visibility is down this is the intensity that is coming to cedar rapids and iowa city this is an incredibly dangerous thunderstorm lightning is ongoing there are likely going to be power poles that come down and trees that come down if you have to head out the door right now try to wait this is not something that you want to be driving out in incredibly low visibility there's going to be debris flying in the roadway stewart is a very experienced storm chaser who that storm caught up it is moving incredibly fast and they went through that and had debris flying toward the car the cars getting pushed off the road there are semis and trucks stopped here we've already seen trucks stopped in the area and trucks that have been flipped over in the in the area from this thunderstorm i mean this like this is just incredible this is this is an insane insanely strong winds right now sarah are you seeing anything from the weather service any more reports yeah i mean mainly the threat with this storm is the winds obviously we've been talking about that there is reports of small hail along with it but again really we're just focusing on that winds that's what's causing the damage that's what's taking down the trees you can see on this right here or on the camera that she just showed you at us 30 trucks are being blown off the road that's how intense these winds are and that's really going to be the story for the next couple of minutes and i know rebecca said these storms are moving quickly across the area they continue to push east but for the most part for the time being as they head into cedar rapids and iowa city here shortly it's going to be very intense for the next several minutes expect these winds and expect lots of power to go out because we're already i'm sure starting to see that already as these storms push across so yeah i mean we i'm i'm sure if we i mean you can look on probably like mid-american and stuff like that and uh and a lion and see i'm gonna try and see if i can find some other other cameras out ahead of this but i mean we're gonna see this come into the cedar rapids area and especially the south side of town that's where i have my greatest concern on this northern side um you're you're probably not going to get into as intense of this of the winds but shellsburg you could be still experiencing 60 mile an hour winds we're still in a warning for 90 mile an hour winds here and we're likely going to see possibly another warning get issued as this thunderstorm continues to trek to the east so this is coming closer to cedar rapids along highway 30 especially toward the eastern iowa airport in walford i'm sure that the winds aren't getting incredibly intense in that area right now i'm going to see if i'm going to see if i can find some more live video of what's going on but we do have we do have video from out in tama so this is a roof torn off of a building there yeah and bricks it looks like bricks are down in the street so this is entema this just went through tema and it's heading toward the cedar rapids area along highway 30 and what you just saw nick go through in new hall norway toward eastern iowa airport on highway 151 and and highway 30 there where that cross section is your it's about to get very intense and it is going to continue to go along i-380 if you know someone who is possibly commuting along i-380 right now you need to let them know that this is a very dangerous thunderstorm visibility is going to drop they can get off of the road i'm sure that they're going to be a lot of people that are going to stop and pull over and there's going to be a lot of issues there so here yeah highway 30 and 16th avenue southwest southwest side of cedar rapids here it goes it's starting now the wind is going to make this incredibly difficult to travel in because there's intense rain there's going to be debris we have seen this happen okay wind is starting to pick up now that is really really dark out i'm looking over my neighbor's house it is black out it is black black okay yeah there's the uh there's the shelf that's the leaning edge of the shelf right there you can hear the roar holy crap you can hear the roar as it comes in oh my god there it is you can hear it roaring off to the west [Applause] there are a lot of people on the highway i'm just clicking around on our d.o.t cameras uh and there are some people around the metro area but the skies are going to get dark sarah can you get um yeah we can we can go to the coralville camera too there's yeah there's highway 30 in williams boulevard you can't even see i can see some lights flashing um but you can you can hardly see what's going on here and this is coming into cedar rapids now oh my goodness the roar you can hear the roar [Applause] oh my god trees are going down over there [Applause] there's the shelf clouds starting to come in and we are going to be experiencing very low visibility very strong winds here very shortly and we are going to just watch this come to the east here irony is sometimes when the damage is so bad like happened in cedar rapids it knocks your communications out so you're not hearing something and that's one of those red flags is when you know something bad is going on but you're not hearing much about it then you know you're in in a real serious situation okay the power power is off i lost power so then i just got a tech test from one of my friends from stony point who showed me this black sky and then my son-in-law who is also a spotter was working he works on the west side he also texted me a picture of black sky so i was like what is this so i looked down and studied it was studying the radar maybe 30 seconds looked up and the sky was a whole lot different i mean then it was showing the classic shelf cloud gust front shelf cloud across the whole west side and then that's like oh boy here we go this is this is the new echo zero sierra trees large mature trees coming down edgewood and highway 100. from us we lost power at our house scott might have lost it too might be why he's not responding and this is i mean this is close we're getting close to the northwest town here very very intense winds and low visibility doesn't look like us wanted to want to go anymore but holy cow this is really blowing [Applause] stay up tree stay up oh my god this is 70. oh my god holy cow i got hit in the house we just had a gust of over 80 at my house and you could just see the front coming coming through and i um stopped to take some photos of it it was it was impressive and and you could sort of hear the wind there were some other folks out there along the cedar river just looking at it and so i started taking i took some pictures and and it was moving pretty fast and and you could start to feel feel the wind pick up a little bit and you could hear the rain uh so high tailed it back to the to the to our our car which was parked not far away and started trying to like okay it's time it's time to go visually it wasn't any different really than you know classic shelf cloud events in the summertime but the fact that i was monitoring ham radio because i'm also a ham radio uh operator there was all sorts of traffic winds here at 60 miles per hour i'm the trees are bent halfway down and so since i was monitoring that that got the adrenaline that that that made me realize that this was no ordinary storm there we go it's just picking up now yeah the tree across the way is blown down in storms before i've been in a position where we block a downed tree or down power lines it's not an everyday thing but it's also not too uncommon during the storm i came across a tree that was down and a power line in the 1600 block of second avenue and it was definitely picking up at that time the storm was getting noticeably bad and a lot of officers were calling in that they were blocking roads with downed trees and down power lines and as i sat there i was in wellington heights and a lot of old trees in that area a lot of big old trees i i realize that there's probably going to be more trees coming down i don't want to be sitting in this block and so that's when i headed out of there me you should be in the basement it should be in the basement not tornadoes there's all sorts of reports of mature trees coming down so yeah okay [Music] yeah okay that's just getting where i'm at right now so all right love you bye i mean oh my the doors just blew open in the studio wow the doors just got blown open wow you can just hear the intensity yeah there it is it's 12 30 but it feels like very nighttime out there yeah the first time when i realized that we may be in danger is when those doors flew open in the back and i realized how powerful those winds and i got a glimpse of what was going on outside and then shortly afterwards the lights started shaking and swinging the lights start shaking sarah and i kind of grab each other and we're like we probably need to leave and they're probably listening to me in the newsroom oh he's losing his roof he lost part of his roof my neighbor lost part of his roof you can see the shingles blowing off oh he's losing his roof [Music] yeah we didn't see it coming until it was almost on us we got out tried to get a few people that were close by in to our service area here for some protection but we couldn't even get out into the park because trees were just falling uh right and left over the road my wife uh is is the wondered if we're really making the right decision to try to drive through drive through that that that rain that storm so we pulled over i mean just a lot of a lot of rain a lot of wind park ranger who came over was like hey would you would you folks like to come down uh into my basement and usually when a park ranger asks you if if you want to take shelter in their basement that seems like a good time to say yes [Music] 851 stockholm i hope it's still attached i hope we can show you how the winds are the winds are very strong it is very eerie the building oh my gosh the building is shaking the bill it sounds like something fell on the building i think we need to um we're going to just assess how things are here but the lights are shaking please stay inside of your home please if you're driving pull over lots of cars have pulled over take shelter get inside a store it's this is again tornado force hurricane force winds our building is shaking yeah we have a very intense winds going on we're going to go into the into our master control to take shelter we advise you to do the same very intense winds are going on i'm going to hope that you can still hear me while i do this there goes another good gust okay that was probably that was 80 there too oh my goodness this is this is a their ratio holy cow i pulled up here during our lunch hour the crew went to go get food and i came back to get some frog tape for an accent wall i pulled the truck up horizontally here because it was already starting to pour pretty hard i just ran from the door to the front door which was here and got drenched because already raining pretty hard but i go back to our shelves which are over in that corner of the shop and then i come back here to the front door and then that's when i saw the street signs bent over trees were bending so i decided i was safer to stay here than try to drive back to the job site just in case it's picked up any further and then this is what we have help stop flying everywhere slime bent over i don't really ever think where can i get away from trees so i head up uh first avenue and that's when it like it was obvious that this was really bad so [Music] when i saw where the tree was or where the car was in the roadway i could tell that that's not a parked car that one was in the lane of traffic so most likely someone stopped it light and the tree had fallen on and no it was obvious i seem to go out there and i need to check on them make sure they're good see if i can do anything to help them uh so i just i think in the window i could see her in there and i was able to talk to her through the rear driver's side window was cracked a couple inches i couldn't see through those windows because they're airbags cider bags had deployed so i talked to her through there i made sure she was okay she said she was she said she was the only person in the car so after she get out the passenger side and moved over there and we couldn't get the door open very far because a branch was blocking it but we got it open just enough that she can slide out damn holy that could have been so much i gotta call my sister back i was just on the phone with her um this has been going on now for 20 minutes almost 20 minutes now [Music] like that this event was ongoing and i knew after about 20 minutes that this was not going to be good because trees were breaking i could see the but in the distance trees were breaking and so i i and i've never seen this much this just kind of destruction in my entire life it'd been going on for a while and going on and going on and going on and i was actually getting cold because i think i had cowboy boots some shorts and a tank top on and all the water coming in here was very cold water too and very cold winds that came with it i was concerned for them to come out here because they were new and so i was really worried and i grabbed them underneath my arms and they were just shaking and they were cold too but um i just felt i had to protect them so we're going to take a deep breath we all are this is not over this is going to continue to go through eastern iowa and we are going to continue to see these incredibly strong winds holy sh holy holy it can't update i don't have data i don't have power either so i don't have wi-fi it's not uncommon if you have somebody with a disabled vehicle up on the highway i try to get to them uh some sort of populated place a business so usually a gas station or grocery store then they can call for somebody that can come get them get them the rest away home so that was that was my first spot a gas station or grocery store and i knew ivy was just a few blocks away [Music] power's out here once i found that first car at the tree on i felt like there should be more of this i need to get out there and find these people because they're not going to be able to call for help i'm not going to be able to get communications that these are the people that need help and that's why i think after i got her into hyvee i was gonna head back out and i kind of realized like i'm not gonna do anyone any good i can't even see across the street from this point i'm not gonna find anyone like this i'm just gonna put a tree on my car [Music] we presume there were other hikers out there because we just didn't have time to go clear the entire park before the storm hit at the time it didn't strike me as something particularly out of the ordinary right it didn't strike me as as this inland hurricane at the time honestly what what really was uh part of the calculation was was the pandemic here we were hanging out in a basement uh with a bunch of strangers i mean right like it hit all the confined space not great ventilation bunch of people we don't know not everybody was wearing masks so that was so there was certainly a little bit of like oh that's not good okay it's picking up wow look at that there goes another branch off that tree so i3d collins road intense winds going on northeast side of town but you can just hear noises things are hitting the roof i started seeing debris and stuff like that floating around i saw somebody's brown plastic large swimming pool just rolling along the field but then it got to the point where debris started hitting my car when it first when it first started the winds were out of the west and then as it started to pick up i started to change the northwest side so i i i moved my car directly into the northwest but it was when the winds probably got to 100 miles per hour it felt like being in an automated car wash your car was shaking water and suds were hitting the window blasting the window that some at times you couldn't see out of the car [Music] [Music] it definitely lasted a long time it was surprising how long it lasted i was basically waiting inside the high knee until you could see across the street again i figured then it would be time to go back out and i was concerned that i would find more situations like this and that's why i wanted to get back on the street and with the radios not working and i knew dispatch was being overwhelmed with calls because everyone has this happening they have no idea this is the entire city the entire county you know this whole area of iowa is being hit like this the rain is dying down this is the rear inflow jet that's coming through i got damaged so so [Music] just listen to the sounds what's going on right now [Music] okay all right i guess i'm closing the door now i don't want to be filming at this window because of the fact that anything coming in here is going to come right into the window this is that rear inflow jet that's punching down to the surface here here's a live look inside of our studio but um the the lights the ceiling shake we could hear everything shaking in there so this is why it's so important for you to be in that lowest level of your home the doors are opening and there are people rushing in to close the doors and we're still trying to tell people what's happening because at that point i'm just kind of narrating because i'm like well this is what's going to be coming you know to the east too and what's happening in cedar rapids but not something i ever expected would happen i thought really the only chance that i would ever have to leave the studio if we were on the path of a tornado you don't think about that happening just with a severe thunderstorm i don't know what we thought was going to happen but i mean very realistically the lights above us in the studio could have come down on our heads that's gotta be a tornado great okay perfect thank you um that was probably 70 there i have half an hour recording capability on my camera i'm at almost 27 minutes right now that's how long this has been going there you go so there are some loud crashes outside i'm pretty sure either trees fell or roofs are getting torn off i'm like cowering in the bathroom now because at least another layer above me but i don't know it takes a lot to scare me i'm a little spooked open this all holds up here i'm just gonna i'll be here it was obvious that this was really bad a lot of officers have been calling on the radios and our radio started getting on the fritz and we actually like lost radios for a while [Music] you couldn't hear everything that was being transmitted everything that was being transmitted uh wasn't coming through that has changed channels we have emergency backup channels that are lesser quality but they can transmit farther oh my god something really big definitely just fell or got torn off i'm gonna keep this rolling just when you think it's starting to die down it picks back up again i think we're probably gusting to like 70 here jeez what is going on are you good for now you're good okay got 45 seconds left on this clip everything's pretty much down there and there's not many trees standing out there no and and things like that it's definitely getting wrestled out here like leaves splattered it's likely going to look like a bit of a i mean like it reminds me like after hurricane stuff outside you're dealing with this very widespread damage oh my god look at this the roof is shaking real hard oh no oh man and yeah i mean we have a big tower that sits above our studio and we have the ceiling shaking in there luckily in the hallway that we are where we are um that it is um that it is it's shaking in that studio i'm very curious what it's like outside right now but i'm not going to go take a look we are staying right here so [Music] the winds just it was so loud because of all the destruction and damage and things that were flying and hitting things it was nothing like i've seen or heard before it's power lines and if it's not doing that it's going to blow over all the trees again not very many standing here in broadcast park taking out the power lines we do have it looks like about for western linn county 15 more minutes in this warning hopefully by then we're just getting some widespread rain and thunderstorms not nearly as intense but far eastern linn county and far off towards the mississippi that one goes to 1 30. so we do still have a good amount of time that we're going to be seeing these damaging thunderstorms and winds and still here it doesn't look like it's died down much oh my god [Music] so oh man oh man oh no oh no all right oh okay all right well oh man so please hold no no no no so [Music] you

Channel: TheNStew

Views: 276,519

Keywords:

Id: o0Y8NlB5NsI

Length: 63min 47sec (3827 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Jack_Shid]

Now if it just included insects crawling on doorbell cameras, it would have covered 98% of the posts here!

[u/TheMrBoot]

I was watching a video on the derecho that went through Iowa last year. One clip from the video had some great examples of both dust “orbs” as well as a lens flare from a light by a door. Since we get these a lot on the sub and it looks so similar to our regularly featured content, I thought I’d share the clip and give a source for them in a more mundane context so that people can have it for reference.

[u/ImposterOfMan]

That was way scarier than ghosts.

[u/Badassnun]

I fell down my kitchen stairs and broke my arm very badly, just as the derecho winds picked up. My partner called the ambulance, which was about two minutes away. They picked up my screaming broken body, loaded it in the ambulance, and dropped me at the emergency room in less than 8 minutes, then headed out to rescue motorists whose cars had crashed due to the storm. I was doped on ketamine and don’t remember anything about the derecho. I spent a month in the hospital.