It was one year ago, June 11, 2008, when Kenny Allen and I found ourselves in a very dangerous place: inside a tornado. Not just ANY tornado, but the same tornado that leveled the Little Sioux Boy Scout Ranch in western Iowa.

On that morning, demands at work kept both of us from doing any real forecasting. Basically I pulled up the Day 1 Outlook from the Storm Prediction Center on Google Earth and told Kenny, “somewhere in there”. We consulted our meteorologist friends and we agreed the Nebraska/Iowa border area somewhere between Sioux City and Omaha looked good.

Our plan was for me to leave work in Huron, South Dakota after lunch and drive to Vermillion, SD, where Kenny was working… which just happened to be on the way to our target: Onawa, Iowa on I-29. I picked him up the minute his shift was over and we headed south.