NWS Shreveport says other damage from Sunday's storm not from tornado

NWS Fwlicia Bowser talks to Aaron Zimmerman about his damaged home. Photo by Jamey Boyum KLTV.
NWS Fwlicia Bowser talks to Aaron Zimmerman about his damaged home. Photo by Jamey Boyum KLTV.
Updated: Jan. 23, 2018 at 7:19 PM CST
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A crew with the National Weather Service out of Shreveport returned to East Texas to finish investigating a storm cell that blew through Wood County Sunday night. Usually they finish the job in one day, but since the government was shut down Monday, they could only go as far as one tank of gas would take them.

We caught up with them while they were investigating the possibility of a tornado now that they could gas up, since the government is now open for business.

The Weather Service started in Alba where Fire Chief Shawn Newland says  he was at the fire station Sunday Night and saw a wedge-shaped cloud.

"We could only see the wedge when there was lightning starting. It came across so quickly it was here and gone," Newland said.

He never saw it touch the ground. NWS Meteorologists Felicia Bowser and Matthew Duplantis moved on to Quitman since in Alba:

"They got a lot of hail, they got a lot of wind and they got a lot of rain," Bowser said.

But no damage. They were chasing a radar-indicated circulation.

"The circulation was just to the west and north of Quitman," Bowser stated.

They found no damage until Winnsboro's Black Oak Properties owned by Rachel Coe.

"That's the roof that's from here, right?" Bowser asked owner Rachel Coe.

"Yes," Rachel answered.

"Okay," Bowser said.

"There were no injuries," Coe said.

There were people in the building when the storm hit, however, Coe said that though it looks bad, it doesn't mean a tornado tore off the roof.

"There's a number of things that thunderstorms can do that not necessarily put down a tornado. They could cause the same damage," Duplantis explained.

The storm moved on and damaged a car wash, but the team didn't find much damage.

"That's the only visible thing I see," Bowser said looking at a dent in a metal awning.

Next stop was Brenda and Aaron Zimmerman's house, which was hit by a tree.

"So yeah, you see it snapped right off," Brenda told Bowser.

"You're the only house on the block that this happened to?" Bowser said.

"Yeah. You can sit there and look straight across where it came," Aaron revealed.

"It's all that way? The car wash and everything?" Bowser asked the Zimmermans.

"Yeah, the car wash is right there," Aaron said.

So the NWS team was beginning to connect points of damage that were along the radar indicated path of rotation.

"If we can put enough points in a row and show that it's tornadic and not wide spread wind damage that's not away from the rotation, then that's what helps us determine that it's a tornado," Duplantis said.

They began in Alba at the start of radar indicated rotation, found damage in Winnsboro, and the day before declared a tornado in DeKalb, at the end of radar indicated rotation, all along a nearly straight 60 mile path.

The weather service said though there were some strong winds, most of the path was upper level rotation, not a tornado, until it hit DeKalb where they declared it an EF2.

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