Around 3:30pm, a friend called and mentioned that we
were under a tornado warning and that a
tornado had been cited in Cedar Park. After I got
off the phone I went outside to see if I could
see anything. Other neighbors were also outside
looking at the skies. I had never seen a tornado
and was actually excited at the prospect of finally
seeing one. Then I saw the finger dip down from
the clouds. I sent my daugter for my camera and
started snapping pictures.
It was almost directly north of us. This direction is obscured
by our neighbors' houses. Each time the finger came down it
was a bit bigger. Sometimes it would dip lower than I could
see. Soon, we could see a faint dust cloud around it. I've
been told that this is how you tell that it has touched down.
The owner of the house in this picture tells me that her good
friend lives in Buttercup Creek and had her house destroyed.
When the tornado first appeared to be touching ground there
was quite a bit of lightning in the immediate area. There
was also visible black things in the air near the twister.
I couldn't recognize them but at least at one time I was
convinced that they were birds. In any case, I saw some sort
of lightning discharge all around one of these objects. I
wish I had had my finger on the shutter at that moment.
It continued across the sky, moving from north of us to west
of us. It seemed to be getting closer but I was always
sure that it was a safe distance and going to miss us.
Of course, I've never been in a tornado and
would probably expect it to miss me right up until it took
off my roof.
This was perhaps the scariest part. It seemed clear that it
was on the ground and it really looks to be only a mile or
two away. I'm not real sure how close it got to us but this
is probably a picture of it.
This is about as big as this one ever got. And to take the
picture I have put as much open space in front of me as possible
to see closer to the ground. My neighbor was running down to
the next intersection to try and get a clear picture of it. I
haven't seen his yet.
Then suddenly, the swirling motion stopped. The funnel became
less pronounced. The edges became more diffuse. The finger
and the dust cloud began to dissipate. Then it started hailing
big time but the tornado was gone.
A couple of days later there was another tornado warning, another one sighted outside of Jarrell. Although that storm didn't do any damage that I know of, everyone was paying alot of attention to the weathermen that day.