Local Storm Chaser Recalls Vermeer Tornado

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Photo taken on July 19th, 2018 by Mark DeBruin

One year ago today, a tornado outbreak in Iowa changed the way many think about the powerful storms. Two EF-3 tornadoes hit both Vermeer Corporation in Pella and much of downtown Marshalltown in a system spawning several storms that afternoon.

One locally based storm chaser caught not only an image of the powerful funnel, but saw it as it hit the Vermeer Mile, and what was left behind. Mark DeBruin graduated from Pella High School this past spring and followed the storm from Prairie City until the it touched down north of Pella.

DeBruin says he thought the storm was going to miss town, until he realized it was turning south near Vermeer as he watched from north near Exit 44 on Old Highway 102.

“I was actually pretty excited because I thought it was going to miss everything,” he recalls as he viewed the storm. “So I was watching this tornado and it was just going through open fields, and it was incredible. But then the tornado, it took a turn south and it actually hit Vermeer, and that’s when it turned into just dread, because you got to know there’s got to be hundreds of people in that building that got hit, and then fear for my own life because it was generally coming my direction.

“As I was turning my car around, that’s when the tornado hit a building and wall of dust just rose up and chunks of building went flying, and there was a huge wall of dust that engulfed the other side of the field I was standing next to, and there was a house I could see that got lost in all of the dust.”

DeBruin will study Meteorology at Iowa State University this fall, and he continues to plan chasing storms throughout the spring and summer months.

Hear more from DeBruin below:

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