Last night at around 9:00pm a tornado hit within 100 yards from my house. We were watching TV and saw the storm coming on the radar but nothing was really said about it on the TV. The tornado sirens were going off and my wife just happened to be looking out the front window and said "come here and look at this"..."what is that"? I opened the front door and saw a pretty large tornado coming straight for us. We grabbed Katelyn and jumped in the back closet and covered up with a comforter I grabbed off the bed on the way by. We could feel the air pressure change and hear the wind and debris hitting the house. It lasted no more than 30secs but seemed like a lot longer. When it was over I walked outside and noticed the houses two houses down from ours had taken some damage. No one was hurt but the more we looked, the houses coming into our subdivision had taken some pretty good damage. The way it looks is that the tornado touched down right at the start of our subdivision and stayed on the ground for about 5 miles. It hit a car dealership about a mile away and caused pretty extensive damage, crossed the freeway and hit a mobile home park and cause a lot of damage and then hit another subdivision and caused more damage. Our subdivision was pretty lucky since we were just at the start of the touchdown.

An hour later another tornado went down the freeway on the other side of the house causing more damage. We got back into the closet and we could hear it passing by.

I feel pretty fortunate that we received no damage at all. Now we have to worry about flooding since it has been raining here pretty much everyday for the last three weeks. I say we meaning AR. We are in pretty good shape here since we sit on a little hill.

Anyway, attached are a couple of pictures. I will try to get out later and take a few more of the car dealership and a few other things.

Britt

 

Glad you and your made it through unharmed!!

 

Britt,

Glad you and your family are ok. I saw all that going on last night on the news, pretty scary. So far we've been lucky down here except for the rain but I can deal with that. Hopefully this next round of stoms coming through won't come anywhere near your neck of the woods.

 

Glad everyone is okay Britt. We had a pretty sever t-storm hit our little town this morning. Lots of thunder and lightning, strong winds and pretty good sized hail but no tornadoes (fortunately).

 

Glad you are okay. Good thing for all brick homes, I could see a vinyl village home blowing right on down.

 

You folks in that region of the country have been getting pounded with some horrific weather.

Prayers for all down that way,


Tim

 

glad your ok.
glad your house survived.

We were talking about tornados today at work. One guy said he was in a hotel in Georgia when they had a tornado warning. they got everyone out of their rooms and down stairs. After an hour of nothing but some light drizzle. the guy asked the manager what the latest update was. The manager replied that it was a couple counties away. So this guy explained to the Manager, that he was from Oklahoma, come get him when you can see the tornado, he will come back down to watch with everyone else.

 

Wow Britt, pretty close call there

I know you are not into that kind of thing but I am going to say a little prayer for you and your neighbors anyway

 

Holy cow neighbor .... that was pretty close !! Luckily for you it is only cosmetic work on the house ... if you consider shingles and gutters cosmetic.

Sure isn't much time to prepare for those things is there ?? Now is the time to stock up your "bug-out kit" .... and get that special room set up for the next time.

I say that .... but we are still nowhere near prepared if one dropped on us.

Sure glad everyone is ok.

Cheers,
PISTOL

 

Prayers from here Britt, that's scarey as heck. BTW, the location you have listed across from your user name, was that before or after this incident?

 

Same goes for me. Hope the worst of them are done with for the year.

 

Glad the Lord was looking out for you and thet cute girl of yours.

 

Actually brick doesn't really do anything for the structure of a house.

 

I know this, I didn't say it did....Brick is a hell of a lot harder to blow off the side of house that vinyl siding is. That means more $ to repair no matter who is forking out the bill. Vinyl blows off on regular windy days sometimes without a storm.

 

Well after driving around yesterday I realize how lucky we were. The tornado touched down right before our neighborhood and stayed on the ground for about 5 miles all the while gaining strength. It damaged about 8 houses in our subdivision, a GMC dealership, a lumber yard across the freeway, totally destroyed a mobile home park, and did a large amount of damage to some large houses in another subdivision. It lifted up and came back down in Little Rock and did more damage there and then did the same thing to the North Little Rock airport.

Almost every car in the dealership had the windows busted out or was overturned. I took my camera but of course I forgot to put my memory card in it

Britt