Photo: Mike Gullett (AP)
Thanks to Fay Bridges, in a response to my Facebook update about yesterday's blog post, for putting what we call 'stormy' into perspective.
This photograph from yesterday morning is not of tsunami survivors in Japan. It's the residents of 26th Street, Joplin, Missouri, walking through what's left of their shattered neighbourhood after a tornado a mile wide and four miles long struck the city on Sunday evening. A hundred and twenty-two people are confirmed dead and fifteen hundred unaccounted for, from a population of 50,000, and it may give some indication of the scale of the devastation that Joplin will be President Obama's first stop after Washington, when he returns to the US at the end of his state visit to Europe this weekend.
As always, the personal stories are the most eloquent. This photo of a man called Tom Hatfield, looking for family possessions outside the remains of his mother's home in Joplin, was taken by Patrick Fallon for the New York Times.
