Wichita tornado

[Aargh]

A fairly mild, but 1-mile-wide tornado decided to drop by for a visit. It's first target was aluminum-based when it hit a mobile home park south of town. EF-3 damage reported there.

Here's the National Weather Service track of the tornado.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ict/?n=april14th_sgTrack

I live between where the words "Cessna Aircraft Airport" and the 3 damage bubbles just above those words- basically right in the middle of the tornado's path. The east-west streets you can see on the tornado track between Kellogg Ave. and "Cessna Aircraft Airport" are half a mile part, so the tornado was about half a mile wide when it went right over my house.

Looking at the damage in my neighborhood, I'd estimate the winds at 80 - 120 mph. Lots of damaged trees, downed fences and some damaged roofs. A mile and a half of downed power lines along one of the "normally" busiest streets in the east side of town.

It took the roof off of a building at the Beechcraft airplane manufacturing plant and evidently deposited it in the lot of the Lexus/Mercedes-Benz dealer just down the street. $1 mill of damage reported there.

Most of my neighbors have 3' - 4' piles of branches stacked up at the curb. I could pick up my stack of branches with one hand and my 30 year old fence is standing straight.

I mentioned to a friend that my neighbors water their trees and I don't. That means I have harder and more dense wood than they have. My friend said he would stop watering his trees if that would give him better wood. My wife was on the other phone and burst into uncontrollable laughter.