This photo combo shows Katie Posten holding the front and back of a photograph she found stuck to her car's windshield on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021 in New Albany, Ind. The photo is from a tornado-damaged home in Kentucky that landed almost 130 miles away in Indiana. (Katie Posten via AP).
By Mike Schneider
When Katie Posten walked outside Saturday morning to her car parked in her driveway, she saw something that looked like a note or receipt stuck to the windshield.
She grabbed it and saw it was a black and white photo of a woman in a striped sundress and headscarf holding a little boy in her lap. On the back, written in cursive, it said, “Gertie Swatzell & J.D. Swatzell 1942." A few hours later, Posten would discover that the photo had made quite a journey - almost 130 miles (209 kilometers) on the back of monstrous winds.
Posten had been tracking the tornadoes that hit the middle of the U.S. Friday night, killing dozens of people. They came close to where she lives in New Albany, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. So she figured it must be debris from someone's damaged home.
“Seeing the date, I realized that was likely from a home hit by a tornado. How else is it going to be there?" Posten said in a phone interview Sunday morning. “It’s not a receipt. It’s well-kept photo."
So, doing what any 21st century person would do, she posted an image of the photo on Facebook and Twitter and asked for help in finding its owners. She said she was hoping someone on social media would have a connection to the photo or share it with someone who had a connection.
Sure enough, that's what happened.
“A lot of people shared it on Facebook. Someone came across it who is friends with a man with the same last name, and they tagged him,” said Posten, 30, who works for a tech company.
That man was Cole Swatzell, who commented that the photo belonged to family members in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, almost 130 miles (209 kilometers) away from New Albany, as the crow flies, and 167 miles (269 kilometers) away by car. Swatzell on Sunday didn't respond to a Facebook message seeking comment.
In Dawson Springs — a town of about 2,700 people 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Paducah — homes were leveled, trees were splintered and search and rescue teams continued to scour the community for any survivors. Dozens of people across five states were killed.
The fact that the photo traveled almost 130 miles is “unusual but not that unusual,” said John Snow, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma.
In one documented case from the 1920s, paper debris traveled 230 miles from the Missouri Bootheel into southern Illinois. The paper debris rides winds, sometimes reaching heights of 30,000 to 40,000 feet above the ground, he said.
“It gets swirled up,” Snow said. “The storm dissipates and then everything flutters down to the ground.”
Posten wasn't alone in finding family photos and school pictures that had traveled dozens of miles in the tornadoes' paths. A Facebook group was set up after the storms so people could post photos and other items like an ultrasound image they had found deposited in their yards.
Posten plans to return the photo to the Swatzell family sometime this week.
“It’s really remarkable, definitely one of those things, given all that has happened, that makes you consider how valuable things are — memories, family heirlooms, and those kinds of things,” Posten said. “It shows you the power of social media for good. It was encouraging that immediately there were tons of replies from people, looking up ancestry records, and saying ‘I know someone who knows someone and I’d like to help.’”
President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" bill could mean cheaper electric bicycles and scooters as the nation attempts to shift away from gas-powered cars. Noa Banayan, the director of federal affairs at PeopleForBikes, joined Cheddar's "Closing Bell" to provide some background on the E-Bike Act included in Biden's reconciliation bill that would provide tax credits for qualified purchases. "We want to make sure, from the bike industry's perspective, that this is a technology and a product that is available to the majority of Americans who want to lower their carbon footprint and get around town faster and do everything that they would normally do in a short car trip but by bike, because it's healthier, it's fast, it's efficient, you're not in traffic," she said.
It's being called the next big trend in crypto. A decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, is an internet community of different types of groups and businesses. The purpose is to allow people to commit funds to a specific cause in a safe way. Now, one social platform is creating a do-it-yourself kit for those who want to step into the space. Upstream Collective just launched the beta mode of its platform with the goal of putting all facets of running a DAO in one place. Alex Taub, co-founder and CEO of Upstream, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Walmart and Zipline have teamed up to launch a drone delivery service in Pea Ridge, Arkansas. The service delivers products to customers within a 50-mile radius of the store. Liam O'Connor, COO of Zipline, joins Cheddar News to talk more about the partnership.
A NASA spacecraft that will deliberately crash into an asteroid is preparing to launch this week. The goal of the DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is to hit the smaller of the two asteroids, Dimorphos, with the spacecraft at about 15,000 miles per hour and see how the impact changes the asteroid’s trajectory. Joey Roulette, space reporter at The New York Times, joins Cheddar News to talk more about it.
After a pandemic pause where the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was closed to the public, the annual tradition is returning to the streets of New York with some new, yet familiar, faces. In addition to 10 marching bands, dozens of floats, 30 heritage balloons, and five other newcomers, one creature from a galaxy far, far away is joining the festivities, courtesy of toy manufacturer Funko. Coming in at 41 feet tall, 29 feet long, and 37 feet wide, the Funko Pop!-inspired Grogu balloon, from "The Mandalorian," will make his debut this year. Cheddar's Michelle Castillo reports.
AAA is expecting 80% more airline passengers and almost 10% more road trips in the pandemic’s biggest holiday travel surge. Melanie Lieberman, senior travel editor at The Points Guy, joins Cheddar News to detail what travelers are up against.
Protests across the country continued all weekend following the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. A jury found the 18-year-old not guilty of all five felony charges. Rittenhouse was accused of killing two people and wounding another during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year. Jaha Howard, political strategist and civil rights advocate, joins Cheddar News to breakdown the verdict.
