The Day After the Tornado

We have just come back from our tour of damage. It seems that the twister went through open countryside, clipped one farm, throught the garden of a house, lifting among other things their trampoline, hit the farm next to us with full force taking off sections of roof, then through the end of our garden and onto open countryside again where was there no evidence of any further damage.

I am sure that if there were no witnesses, no one whould have known what had happened, as it apprears that the rest of the village is totally unaffected!

Here are some photos to prove that we are not making it all up!



The main damage to the roof, parts of which were found 200 metres away!






Ram found several pieces as large as he is, just lying up against the farm side of the wall of our garden.






All that is left of the neighbour's trampoline.




This piece of roofing dug into the ground, so it is amazing that no one was hurt!



This apple tree won't make it...



...but this one might as the roots weren't ripped out and the trunk has only bent, not snapped.



This is the bath tub water butt that flew through the air over the wall into the paddock where the two apple trees were blown over.




The only structural damage we had was to the treehouse. The upright on the left should be vertical and couple of feet to the right! I am not sure we can fix it as the whole tree seems to have shifted, so we may have to take it down and start again.

We were lucky really. The car was badly scratched by a wheelbarrow flipping over, but it was in a not very noticble place and will easily be repaired. We have found the dog bowl that went missing in some brambles, the lid to the birdfeed storage bin in the paddock next door (although the feed may have to be ditched as it got rather wet), and the bolster pillow under our trampoline. This was quite interesting as the trampoline was in the opposite direction to the prevailing wind in relation to where the bolster started out. More proof that it was a tornado rather than just strong winds!

I had a chat with Glow (we have given her the name of one of her cows, to protect her identity!) the farmer and we both realised that it was only this morning that we could talk about it without our hearts beating fast!

For something that lasted so short a time, it has certainly had a huge impact!