Tornado hits northwest Harris County

Residents in Cypress still have more cleaning up to do after their Northwest Harris County neighborhood was hit by a tornado.  The twister tore trees apart, ripped up roofs, flattened fences and didn’t leave the Lone Oak Village subdivision before damaging every home in one cul-de-sac.

"I told my wife it’s coming.  I said, I can see it.  It’s coming right at us," explains Del Folmer who says no sooner than he stepped outside of his Northwest Harris County home, he was chased right back in by a tornado of all things.

"I saw the cone swirling and it was moving like it was coming right at us."

"We all ran and got in the closet downstairs with the dogs and the whole family.  The roof and everything it felt like it was shaking," adds his wife Francine Folmer.

"We could hear the roaring as it came right between the houses.  The house felt like it compressed a little bit and all of a sudden it like exhaled and it made a noise and as the roaring went on by. It got real quiet," says Mr. Folmer. And just like that, he says the damage was done.  "It blew out the window in my truck, broke one of the trees.  It was laying against my front door.  The garage is bashed in."

"My fences are down.  My gutter is over here when my house is there.  My patio furniture the glass and everything is all busted," explains resident Ronnie Warren. 

"We definitely had a tornado touch down at least four times," says Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez who checked in on residents in several spots in the Barker Cypress/Highway 290 area that were hit by a tornado.

"There was also a commercial building that was damaged nearby near the Berry Center area and we know a car flipped over with a driver in the vehicle.  It doesn’t appear the driver was injured but we’re seeing some pretty dramatic stuff out here," says Sheriff Gonzalez. 
   
The sheriff says he also received reports of a four by four that smashed through the front of a house with such force, it traveled right through it and burst out the back of the house landing in the backyard.
 
Amazingly there are no reports of injuries.