For a period of fourteen hours the residents of Southwest and South Central Missouri were terrorized Monday evening into Tuesday morning with dozens of tornados and a total of sixty-two seperate tornado warnings. Two fatalities occurred along with dozens of injuries and damages that were very extensive from the Southwest tip of Missouri in McDonald County to Phelps County in Rolla and at too many points to name in between.
We were hit by a twister on the farm that came through at 3:30 AM. It is indeed a miracle and most fortunate looking at the aftermath that we and/or some of our animals were not hurt. Here”””’’s a look at some of the property damage. There”””’’s going to be a lot of clean up which will become apparent to some that have visited this farm, because we do try to keep it looking neat. It is not so neat in places right now-as follows-
These two sheds, which previously frequently housed some of my show heifers, were pulled from the ground, lifted up and dropped onto a fence where they were impaled on the steel posts, like some Paul Bunyan size character had been playing and suddenly became tired of his toys……They are damaged enough they””””ll probably be broken down and hauled away….. This is looking to the west and you can barely see my home in the back of the second barn. My wonderment is, how did all the beautiful big trees near the yard stay up? And you””””ll wonder too, in another couple of shots….
Another view of one barn looking to the east. The tornado came from the west and continued on to the north and west as you will see.
Continuing the path to the North and slightly west-I would estimate that at least 60% of this small patch of woods, which is just south of our big barn and where my registered cows spent many a happy hour resting beside their hillside pasture venue, are demolished and will have to be cut down, cut up, and cleaned up.
Mother Nature”””’’s way of making a property remodel necessary. If it isn””””t down, it”””’’s mangled….
Of course it took down the tall ones. Some of the biggest ones are down, gone for good.
Mother Nature”””’’s other “calling card” was to our house, and that”””’’s a little harder to show with the same drama, but let”””’’s just say, she cranked on it. The roof will need to be replaced, the insulation in the attic is soaked which of course must be taken out and replaced, there”””’’s cracks and twists and brick moved iout of position and well, it”””’’s kind of a mess. We are still analyzing the extent of that at this time.
The weather had called for a possible risk of an “isolated tornado” with no expectation of an outbreak and one of the weathermen locally said when it was over,”In case you were wondering, that was an outbreak.”
We feel so glad we are OK, as we were in the house when it happened and it was just that fast, there was not time to think about it much. I never knew in time to get frightened, and was only after I saw everything that occurred. I did hear sort of a rumble comparable to a stock trailer driving along for about thirty seconds, but no roar like the infamous train you hear about, and the house just sort of shuddered for just a moment, like a living creature when cold….that was all. There was lots of hail and water, and that started coming in all over the place a bit later. That”””’’s when we knew, still prior to daylight, that we had issues with the house.
Many, many homes were completely destroyed in this storm. My parents lost three small barns and my aunt and cousins lost three of their bigger barns. They are all 100 miles west. It was a “perfect storm” in some ways and records indicate the last outbreak of this kind in January happened in the late 60”””’’s.
