"T" is for Tornado

2008 has been an interesting year thus far, but Mother Nature decided to throw us another curve ball. This morning several tornadoes touched down, one of which hit our property. We were very lucky in that we weren't home when it hit - Cary and I were both at work and the kids were at Kay's house - and also in the sense that we didn't sustain major damage to the house, although 3 trees fell on it. We lost our barn; the kids' wooden swingset/play yard was destroyed; and we lost my new yard swing, our picnic table, and the trampoline. Here are a bunch of pictures of the damage we sustained.

This is a view from the road - we lost several 100 year-old Norway Pines that were pulled up by the roots and dropped onto our driveway. Our house is the brown thing behind the trees...

Here is the view from 270th - we are looking at three large root balls from the fallen Norway Pines...

This is taken looking towards the house from the mailbox...

This huge tree was uprooted, but our mailbox remained in the ground...



Here is a shot of the three trees that landed on the house...
Here are several shots of the destroyed barn...

All that remains is a portion of the two sidewalls...
What remains of the inside of the barn...

These pictures were taken standing inside the barn looking out...
Here's 1/2 the barn roof...

A look into the pasture...

Looking down the hill...

Fallen trees beside the barn...

See the white thing in the tree? That is a piece of the sheet metal from the barn. It is about 60-70 feet up in the air in that tree!

The kids' playyard was trashed...
Our corral sustained damage...
Brad, from the National Weather Service, stopped by to view the storm damage to assist them in determining the severity of the tornado...

Here is another view of one of the trees on the house...
And here are Cary and Chuck removing the trees from the roof...

With some help from Carl in the skidsteer, they were able to remove all three trees!


As I said above, we were very fortunate that no one was injured, and that the house was spared. We were also lucky as the two dogs and the cat all survived! :)