Shawn Penick looked back across the field near his house just north of East Enterprise and tried to figure out what happened.
“There’s no trees or hills back through there that would block those winds,” he said as he pointed off to the west. “When the wind started howling and coming through there, you knew it was going to be bad.”
Those strong winds last Thursday caused severe damage in several areas around East Enterprise.
Shawn Penick’s barn lost most of its metal roof, which blew off of the building and was scattered across State Road 56 as it went off to the east. A large section struck a cattle trailer parked on the east side of the road; while other parts were twisted around trees and lying in crumbled piles.
Looking off to the east, pieces of the roof — and also pieces of the roof from the barn on the east side of the road which also suffered damage — was spread more than a quarter of a mile across the field.
Trees along highway 56 were uprooted at several locations, and electrical power was out for a time to some residents in that area.
Sue Singleton stood at the back door of her home and looked at a large pile of limbs and leaves next to her garage.
“My car’s under there somewhere,” she said. “I got under there enough to see that I think there’s a crack in my windshield, but we won’t know what’s wrong until we get everything off of it.”
“My insurance agent told me to leave everything just like it is until they get this figured out,” Shawn Penick said. “I was going to start building fence this weekend, but I guess that’s going to be pushed back now.”
Lane Penick, Shawn Penick’s four-year old son, was riding on the tractor with his dad as they surveyed the damage on Friday morning, and reported that his “gator” had also been overturned in the storm.
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Lisa Rieman, who lives just east of East Enterprise off of State Road 250, knew something was wrong when the cattle started coming back to the barn. The fish in her nearby pond were also acting strangely, and when the winds picked up, she and her family braced to see what was going to happen.
“It was really loud, just like they say a tornado sounds,” Lisa Rieman said as she pointed around her backyard. “I’m not sure what it was, but the wind was strong. It blew our boat out from under our shelter house and blew a round bale feeder about a quarter of mile down our lane — but it didn’t do anything to the clothes that were hanging on the line. It was strange.”
On some nearby property the Lisa and Reggie Rieman own across from New Liberty Baptist Church, some large trees had been laid over by the wind, exposing the roots and damaging some fencing.
“You can almost see the line that it came through,” she said as she surveyed a toppled apple tree. We lost some beautiful trees.”