WICKLIFFE, Ohio — Severe weather across Northeast Ohio left one Wickliffe homeowner without a home Thursday evening after what is believed to have been a possible tornado.
Clean up that will take months all caused in just seconds.
“It got really, really dark. It got really, really loud,” Wickliffe resident Abigayle Tatterson said. “At tops a minute, minute thirty seconds.”
The Richards family live less than 10 yards away from a home that was left unrecognizable. Several of the family members were home when the storm kicked up.
“I saw it right in front of my window. With everything up inside of it like this,” Jennifer Richards said. “What looked like a tornado turning right in front of my window.”
“I heard like a little bit of wind,” Lenny Richards said. “By the time my sister yelling get to the basement that's when I started realizing.”
“It looks like it was either a microburst or maybe a tornado,” Wickliffe Fire Chief, Jim Powers said.
The homeowner of the damaged home arrived to the sights and sounds of clean up, forced to stay elsewhere with family.
“The owner wasn't home at the time. She's been here. We talked to her,” Powers said.
All the chaos unfolded just before 5 p.m. Thursday.
The boom and bang heard blocks away.
“There was just a loud boom and all the lights turned off,” Jack Stout, a Wickliffe resident, said. “You could physically hear the tree fall.”
“It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” Tatterson said.
According to Powers, the microburst or tornado touched down for about half a mile, leaving a large radius of the community without power.
Power is hoped to be restored by Friday morning.
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