:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 5.23.2004 ::
:: Twister ::
From The San Diego Tribune
One person killed as tornadoes descend on Nebraska
By Kevin O'hanlon
HALLAM, Neb. (AP) – Their ears popped because of the abrupt change in air pressure. Then they heard the cracking of trees being torn out of the earth.
"The wife told me, 'Let's get under the stairs," Richard Raley said.
Raley and his wife, Karleen, huddled beneath the basement steps Saturday as a tornado ripped away their house and much of the rest of the small village of Hallam.
In all, more than a dozen tornadoes swept across southern Nebraska, killing at least one person and prompting Gov. Mike Johanns to declare a state of emergency.
The tornadoes capped two days of severe weather that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people in from Nebraska to Michigan to West Virginia.
ALSO
From The Guardian UK
Tornadoes Destroy Tiny Iowa Town
By PATRICK CONDON
BRADGATE, Iowa (AP) - Nearly all of the 50 homes in this town were destroyed and 15 people were injured as a tornado carved a path through northwestern Iowa.
``When she hit, I just laid down on the floorboard and held on,'' Deputy Fire Chief Dennis Behnkendorf said. ``Everything was flying past the door. I jumped onto the ground and held on for dear life.''
While Iowa was hardest hit, severe weather wiped out power as it whipped through parts of West Virginia, Nebraska and Ohio late Friday.
Tornado Alley, a swath running from west Texas through Oklahoma and Kansas to Iowa, is ripe for stormy conditions because of colliding air masses that occur each spring.
In Iowa's Pocahontas County, sheriff's officers said a tornado moved through a golf course and cemetery in Rolfe, population 721, before ripping through Bradgate in neighboring Humboldt County.
``All of the houses and buildings have sustained some type of damage,'' said Brian Rickless, a Humboldt County sheriff's deputy who was headed to Bradgate when the tornado hit.
The head of the state's homeland security department, Ellen Gordman, estimated that 90 percent of Bradgate's homes in Bradgate were destroyed or sustained major damage, and reported 10 known injuries.
Weather Eye: Tornadic weather stirs Evergreen state
Sunday, May 23, 2004
PAT TIMM for The Columbian
It was a wild week around Washington state with numerous thunderstorms, flash floods, hail and tornadoes.
The Evergreen State averages about one tornado annually; but in just the past three weeks, we have recorded four.
From GrandForksHerald.com
Weather service teams looking at damage from night of tornadoes
GRAND FORKS, N.D. (AP) - National Weather Service teams are investigating the damage caused by a cluster of tornadoes that ripped through eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.
Meteorologists were in Towner and Griggs counties Friday, two days after about a dozen tornadoes hit the region. No injuries were reported, but the twisters caused damage in several counties.
Experts were talking to residents and taking photos to help rate the strength of the tornadoes, which are measured according to destruction.
Crews from the weather service office in Grand Forks had earlier visited sites in the Pembina County town of Leroy, and in Humboldt, in Minnesota's Kittson County.
AND
From Canada.com
Storms rock Southern Ontario
Canadian Press
Sunday, May 23, 2004
posted by me
:: 5:44:00 PM [+] ::
...
