MARION, Iowa — As the wind howled, Jennifer Horning couldn’t help but think of a similar storm she’d gone through about 34 years previously.
The Iola native was at home during the lunch hour Monday at her family’s eastern Iowa farm when a line of severe thunderstorms blasted a swath across the Midwest.
The storms sustained 60-80 mph winds for more than 40 minutes.
“Once it started, it just kept getting worse and worse,” Horning told the Register in a telephone interview.
Horning and her husband, Neal, are among the tens of thousands of Iowans digging out from Monday’s storm, described by meteorologists as a derecho.
Though their roof stayed intact, it lost most of its shingles, Horning said. “We had water coming in almost every room in the house.”
A nearby hoop building fell on one of the family’s tractors. Their machine shed lost part of its roof. Another nearby building collapsed on other farm equipment. A grain bin was moved about 300 yards.
On top of that, nearly all of their corn and soybean crops were leveled.
A team of insurance adjusters were scheduled to arrive today to help gauge the losses.
“The crops are not good,” Horning said.
But first things first. “We’re just been cleaning up trees today.”
The Hornings, like most of their neighbors, remained without power Tuesday.
Businesses relied on generators to stay open. Trips to the grocery store for essentials were taking two hours or more; customers waiting to get gas were in line for up to four hours at some locations.
JENNIFER HORNING, daughter of Iolans Jack and Beverly Franklin, works for FMC Corporation, an agricultural sciences corporation.
She’s been working from home amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
