Granted, it was only F0-F1, but it still was pretty scary. What was visible looked for all the world like puffy white cumulus clouds, except they were swirling around at high speed. My windshield was shattered from hail a minute earlier.
The tornado continued on, passing through my back yard a minute later, according to my wife, who was unwisely looking out the window instead of hunkering down somewhere safer. It picked up our trampoline and smashed it through my neighbor’s fence and picked up a cast iron bird bath, which was moved to the front yard beneath an unbroken window. My neighbor diagonally across the street had a ginormous oak tree to the side of his house. A branch from that tree broke off and drove through the roof, which caused damage upstairs and downstairs.
The tornado continued a couple of blocks to a lake roughly 1/2 mile across. A homeowner across the lake was videotaping (yeah, it happened awhile ago) the tornado and captured the moment it passed through my neighborhood and the moment it started sucking up water from the lake. The weight was too great and the lower part fell into the lake - water and debris alike. The remaining part hastily retreated to attempt a rally, which no doubt came as a relief to the homeowner who saw the beastie fall apart before reaching him.
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