'Our' Tornado

Same view at a different angle. Our door is the one on the side, we normaly park our car close to where the ladder is leaning. The photographer next door told me that our door was nearly pulled out of the frame. When we went in afterwards there were leaves jammed in the cracks and tons of torn leaves in the house. I also found a poor bug that got jammed into the window frame on the door.

Two of the several holes in the siding of the house, just a few feet from our door.

One of the two huge oak trees that used to be in front of the house. Notice in the background the name of the art studio two doors down from our house ... Sometimes Whatever, a song from the Wizard of Oz.

This is what that beautiful old oak tree looked like this afternoon (4/3/06)

From this angle it looks like this oak was spared major damage. But ....

Nope ... it was sheered off about 10 feet from the roots. The top of this tree is places unknown.

The storage buildings next door. These are on the other side of the house from our 'front' door. Our house, the photo studio and these storage units are all owned by the same guy. These also had two large oak trees in front of them, the one lying in chunks on the ground actually landed in the road and had to be pulled off the road by someone with a pick up truck.

Another angle of the storage building.

The tree in our back yard. It was a beautiful Black 'Jack' Oak tree that shaded much of the back yard.

About three feet from the downed tree above is a plastic lawn chair. It looks like it was pushed against the barbed wire fence that separates the property our house is on and the rear property until the fence cut the chair in two.

The second part of the chair. Oh, and the tree this chair is in, is still standing with what looks like minimal damage.

A mini crater left by one of the huge chunks of hail that fell just before the tornado came through. The side yard is littered with these holes. Two and a half hours AFTER the storm there were still huge chunks of ice on the lawn despite the fact that it was rather warm out.

The then upstairs neighbor's car. He didn't drive it and he wasn't home when the storm hit (in fact no one was home in any of the apartments). The rear windshield WAS there Sunday morning, it was probably shattered by the hail. I can't be positive, but I think while I was waiting in the car for Rick there was a spider web crack on it but I wasn't exactly thinking of much more than getting the hell out of there. The car was parked parallel to the house with the front bumper about even with the corner of the house. There are no skid marks, so the car was pretty much picked up and dropped back down about 5 feet forward and about a foot to the right and a slight angle. The house shown here is the photo studio next door.

The mail boxes, and sign post for the photo studio ... notice the posts are there but the sign is gone. The studio owner says that when he last saw the sign it was "Going 90 miles an hour due northeast"

My 'humor' picture. Mail box #1 is ours, #2 is the photo studio's, # 3 is the front neighbor's, #4 is the art studio two doors down and #5 is the upstairs neighbor's.
Thank you to Megg for adding the "Have you seen my sign" message to my hand drawn Photo Studio Sign. Megg, you rock :)

Aside from dirt and leaves, the sign post is undamaged.

My UFO ... actually it was a large plastic flower pot that was deposited there by the tornado. It was blown down a few nights later during a thunderstorm.

A little bit of NON damage lol ... the junk on the ground was roofing shingles, and from who knows where. Notice the rope hanging from the tree? Well that was my clothesline. My bird feeder was sucked clean of seed but the feeder itself wasn't damaged at all.

The left hand picture is of the outside of our door. The right hand picture is the INSIDE of our door. There was no damage prior to the storm.

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Updated 11/8/2006