Another wave of powerful storms swept across the Midwest yesterday with multiple casualties. Iowa State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Alex Dinkla said in a press conference yesterday that multiple people were killed by a tornado that hit Greenfield, a town of around 2,000 people about 50 miles southwest of Des Moines. Dinkla didn’t have an exact count of those killed, nor did he have a complete count of the injured. He did say that “at least a dozen” injured residents were transported to the hospital, but that it would be today before exact totals would be available.
The Greenfield tornado was one of several twisters reported around Iowa yesterday, including one that took down several wind turbines that stood 250-feet tall. It wasn’t just tornadoes that brought danger; over five inches of rain fell in less than two hours in parts of the state, flooding basements and submerging cars in low-lying areas. The National Weather Service said the Omaha region received a total of eight inches of rain in one day.