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Vivian Forsythe stands in her damaged home, with parts of the roof strewn across the floor. Photo courtesy of Accuweather
With a tornado bearing down on her home in Bell County, Texas, about 70 miles north of Austin, Vivian Forsythe took shelter in the only place she could — her walk-in closet.
A powerful storm was bringing large hail, damaging winds and a strong tornado to the area around Salado, Texas. As the storm was tracking through the area, Forsythe noticed the unusually intense weather.
“We had hail, and then it looked like everything was dying down, and then I kind of noticed the sky looked really bad and I heard this humming sound, a really loud humming sound, like a thousand pieces of equipment running,” Forsythe told AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell.
That humming sound was a rapidly approaching upper-end EF3 tornado, which had just taken an extremely unusual jog to the north. While that jog likely spared some homes, it put Forsythe’s home directly in the path of the powerful twister.
“I started to see debris in the air so I knew something was going on, so I ran in my master bedroom closet and just sat in there,” she recalled. “Within seconds, it just felt like the whole house was gonna lift up.”
The tornado packed winds of up to 165 miles per hour as it went right over Forsythe’s property, destroying her roof and leaving damage all across her house. Thankfully, Forsythe was uninjured in the storm, which injured 23 others, likely in part because she followed the advice of experts and sheltered in an interior closet.
“All you can do is just pay attention and have that place picked out in your house because I had that place picked out, I knew exactly where to go, so I think that’s the most important thing,” Forsythe said.
AccuWeather meteorologists recommend keeping an active eye on the weather, especially when severe storms are in the forecast. AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said the AccuWeather mobile app was designed with just these types of situations in mind.
He recommended enabling push notifications so that app users can be kept abreast of timely weather warnings, especially in the heart of severe weather season and with hurricane season approaching. If a tornado warning has been issued, safety experts recommend taking shelter in a pre-designated area such as a safe room, basement or storm cellar.
If that’s not an option, the best place to be is the center of an interior room on the lowest level, like a closet or interior hallway, just like Forsythe did. These rooms are away from corners, windows, doors and outside walls, which are spots that are most likely to take the brunt of the tornado damage.
Reporting by Bill Wadell.
