<font color="#FF0000">UPDATE:</font> Windstorm whips up damage in Wellborn

Local News

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June 19, 2009

By Carnell Hawthorne Jr., Reporter

(See photo, this site.)

Severe storm winds blew through Suwannee County Thursday leaving several properties damaged and numerous trees uprooted, according to a sheriff's report.

Wayne and Eliene Brooks of Wellborn said they had just returned home around 5:30 p.m. when the windstorm blew through the area. The couple, who live on 53rd Road, said they stood in the doorway of their home with their hands pressed against the door to keep the wind outside. "That's how strong it was," Wayne Brooks said.

His wife Eliene said that in the nine years they have lived at their residence, they have never seen as much damage done to their property as happened Thursday. Several large trees were uprooted and snapped in half in the couple’s front yard. Porch furniture was blown across to the opposite end and deposited in a heap. In their back yard a trailer camper had been moved from its platform, tree limbs lay atop a shed whose door had been blown inward past its hinges, a birdhouse lay bent in half, and a flag pool had been broken into three pieces.

Eliene Brooks said luckily their horses weren't in their backyard stable at the time of the storm because the area was plastered with large tree limbs.

The scene wasn't much different farther down the road. On 47th Road, tree limbs lined the highway and many were snapped in half and lay across fences.

"Roofs were blown off a couple of barns," Sheriff Tony Cameron said Friday. No injuries were reported.

Marion Catalano, local observer for the National Weather Service, said about a half-inch of rain fell Thursday.

"The wind was blowing so hard that the rain was blowing horizontal," she said.

County officials await a meeting with National Weather Service representatives to determine the exact nature and severity of the storm.