Last night, a tornado may have touched down 6 houses from me

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

At around 11 PM last night, a line of storms came through my neighborhood. I stood outside watching it – it was incredibly windy and rainy, with gusts stronger than I have seen in a long while, perhaps going back to the last hurricane I was here for. There was one particularly intense episode with a heavy wind gust, and I heard a boom, which I assumed was a transformer going or a close bolt of lightning.

This morning, the east end of the apartment complex that my house backs up to had no roof. The trees had been knocked down and even an iron car gate was all twisted up. There was a 2x4 flung into the roof of a house half a block down. The gas station next to the apartment complex had been somewhat shredded, and had a pump and a station knocked over. The apartment complex faces a bayou, and there were a bunch of trees down on the side of the bayou. Across the bayou, there is a Kwick-Lube type of place that had its sign knocked down and the glass blown out and parts of the roof taken off.

It’s pretty amazing how localized the damage is, so everyone is presuming a tornado. I don’t think I heard the locomotive sound, but the wind was loud enough that I can fool myself into thinking that that’s what it was…

Anyway, my house is fine. I’m going to walk down to the end of the block and see if there is anything I can help out with…

2

Storm lover in me: Wow! Spectacular! :cool:

The rest of me: Oh, meep. :frowning: Is anyone hurt?

3

Doesn’t look like it. The storm lover in me was outside watching until I thought maybe it was a bit too intense for comfort…

There are isolated apartment complexes and homes affected throughout SW Houston; it looks like it was either a few tornados or just isolated wind blasts. With the pattern, I would bet on tornado (across the bayou, then one segment of the apartments in a pretty straight line with nothing else affected).

4

I wouldn’t rule out straight-line downdraft winds. They can certainly look like tornado damage, but usually don’t carry as far. In fact, I’d lean towards that being the culprit from your descriptions, plus tornadoes in Houston are exceedingly rare compared to other parts of the country.

5

The news was reporting it as a tornado. I don’t know if tornados are exceedingly rare around here, especially during the spring and summer storms that have beset us. But they generally hit the outskirts of the city, not so much a mile from the loop, which is where we live.

The line of destruction stretched about 2 miles southwest of here, with several apartment complexes, businesses, and houses affected.