Residents of Dignowity Hill were left puzzled after a confirmed EF-0 tornado wreaked havoc, toppling fences and tearing roofs in seconds.
SAN ANTONIO — It was a few minutes after 5 a.m. on July 15, the same day a confirmed tornado cut a path of destruction through the northwest side.
At the time, nobody reported damage in east San Antonio, but after reviewing video and their records, the National Weather Service has just announced that an EF-0 tornado also rattled a few blocks in the Dignowity Hill Historic District.
This story continues below.
Mary Ellen Hardee said she was awake and ready to start her day at her home in Dignowity Hill.
“I was just kind of starting to wake up and everything was completely calm and there was no storm,” Hardee said.
She said it wasn’t raining. There was no thunder. But suddenly, she said, everything was dead quiet and still.
Hardee said she heard a train passing by, which is common, as the railroad tracks are less than 1,000 feet away.
But she said suddenly the noise level went sky high.
“You could hear the train, and then all of a sudden this roaring, probably twice the sound as the train came and wind everywhere. It was like you could hear things flying by and then it left,” Hardee said.
A surveillance camera about 300 feet away at Filters4Air captured the chilling scene as items in the parking lot took flight.
The roof of one of their buildings was also peeled up but not ripped completely off.
Marshall Dilling said when he arrived for work, he couldn’t understand why an outside storage area was in disarray.
Dilling said it wasn’t until his neighbors came calling and asking about surveillance video that he realized the damage was caused by a sudden, violent burst of wind.
“Our neighbors came over and asked me if I had a video of what happened and I was like, what do you mean what happened last night?” Dilling said, adding one of his cameras had a clear view.
“You can see it clear as day. You can see the wind starting to speed up and then you can see it coming down the street and it lasted I don’t know maybe a few seconds, and I mean the back of here was a mess and then you can see it coming down the street and then boom, power’s out so that was about it,” Dilling said.
To stream KENS 5 on your phone, you need the KENS 5 app.
Download the KENS 5 app
Dilling said his building has some roof damage, but he said he realizes it could have been much worse.
“When you get in front of the building, you can kind of see it, but other than that there’s really not much damage, which is kind of surprising because you saw how ferocious that video was,” Dilling said.
The worst of the big blow only lasted about 12 seconds, but when it was over, there was a path of damage that stretched several blocks.
Construction fencing at the Ella Austin Community Center two blocks away was blown over.
A stately Victorian home near Sherman and Hackberry streets had roof damage.
Hardee said, “Half of the roof was flipped up and flipped onto the other side, and you could actually see a hole in the roof.”
When the wind died down, Hardee said that noise was replaced by the wail of alarms.
“The building alarms from three of the buildings around here were all going off and car alarms everywhere, and it was just super loud,” Hardee said.
Like a giant carrot being harvested, Hardee said a street sign and its concrete base was ripped from the ground, twisted and tossed about ten feet.
When she started surveying damage, Hardee said she found more damage at San Antonio Upholstery Supply on North Mesquite.
The brick front facade of the building was ripped off and was left shattered in the street.
To stream KENS 5 on your phone, you need the KENS 5 app.
Download the KENS 5 app
The first employee who arrived to work said he was so shocked he wasn’t sure what to say when he called his boss to report the damage.
The startled man said, “I got here and I pulled up into the driveway, and I saw that everything had fallen down and I kind of freaked out.”
The man said his boss was confused too.
“He said, ‘What do you mean the wall fell down?’ And I was like, well, the whole thing fell!” He said he resorted to sending pictures and video clips of the broken bricks to convey the seriousness of the situation.
Hardee said many of her neighbors are left with the same question.
“My question is, what was it? Was it a tornado? Was it a downdraft? Downdrafts don’t generally come in, twirl around things, and then leave, but with no rain, nothing followed, nothing.” Hardee said.
KENS 5 shared the video of the event with the National Weather Service. They later confirmed the event was an EF-0 tornado.
The fire department says even with all the damage, apparently nobody called for help. Some of the workers said they focused on cleaning up the mess, grateful that nobody was hurt.
To stream KENS 5 on your phone, you need the KENS 5 app.
Download the KENS 5 app