Photos: Tornado damage in Dallas

by Bill Baumbach of The Collin County Observer

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Had the storm stayed on the ground just a few more hundred yards, it would have crossed SH 183 and I-35 while both roads were crowded with rush hour traffic.

A tornado touched down in Dallas Wednesday evening about two blocks from where I work. (While this has nothing to do with Collin County, other than that a few minutes later the same tornado set off the sirens in southern Collin County, I thought the telling of it might interest some of our readers.)

We were outside loading up our cars at about 6 p.m. at the shop which is two blocks from Mockingbird Lane and just off the Trinity levee. It had just finished raining -- a real tropical downpour with heavy winds that made the rain appear to be falling sideways. As the warning sirens began to blare, we noticed two dark low-hanging clouds spinning low in the sky. I later learned that one of those funnel clouds touched down in Oak Cliff.

As we looked on, both low-hanging clouds quickly disintegrated and became assimilated into the thunderclouds. A minute later, the sun came out. Thinking the danger had passed, we continued our work. A few minutes later, we noticed a weird long, thin, vertical, almost transparent, white cloud silhouetted in front of the sun and reaching all the way to the ground.

We watched as that cloud grew and began moving quickly from south to north. As it arrived in front of us, about two blocks away we heard a machine-like noise, like a wood chipper. Then debris rose from the ground as a black cloud at the base of the long, thin tornado. It was only on the ground for half a minute, trashing a quarter mile path along Mockingbird Lane.

After it passed, I drove to the storm's path, about two blocks from where we had stood. It looked like the funnel cloud hit the ground just north of the levee -- smashing out all the windows in a parked van, tearing down large tree limbs and breaking glass at a store front.

As the path moved north, the damage became greater, doing the most damage just north of the intersection of Mockingbird and Irving Blvd. There, telephone poles were down and one business was completely destroyed, with a large 18-wheeler smashed into the front of the building as the walls and roof collapsed.

All apparent damage ended just a block further north. Had the storm stayed on the ground just a few more hundred yards, it would have crossed SH 183 and I-35 while both roads were crowded with rush hour traffic. Then the cost in life would have been horrid.

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