By Libby Janes Written on April 7, 2026 I gazed out from the balcony, across a vast indoor water table. “It even smells like the river! exclaimed the person beside me. In March, I visited Baton Rouge for the Volunteer Louisiana’s Disaster Summit , which included a tour of the LSU Center for River Studies. Their Lower Mississippi River Physical Model is a powerful tool for understanding river processes, coastal restoration, and river management. This to-scale 10,800 square-foot model is a...

(OK tornadoes & Synod-wide storms) Written by Libby Janes Over the past week around our Synod, we have experienced some severe weather events. In Oklahoma, there were seven confirmed tornadoes in Oklahoma on Thursday, March 5th, and nine tornadoes on Friday March 6th, including an EF-3 tornado in Beggs, Oklahoma. (For more National Weather Service data on the Oklahoma tornadoes: https://www.weather.gov/oun/tornadodata-ok-2026 ) There have also been high wildfire risk warnings in the western...

Libby Janes, Director of the Synod of the Sun Partnership for Disaster Recovery Warming center volunteers prepare the center for overnight guests at Canyon Creek Presbyterian Church in Richardson, TX From January 23 rd through 28 th , a huge winter storm moved through the Synod of the Sun. Two days before the onset, the Synod of the Sun Partnership for Disaster Recovery (SPDR) sent out an alert sharing meteorological updates and NOAA forecast images from the Gulf Coast Regional VOAD meeting,...