Manhattan Tornado

My mom called on Wednesday night at about 10:00pm (11:00pm her time), which is highly unusual because they are normally in bed at that time. She called and said they were in the basement again, and I immediately thought, not again. The Midwest has had a ton of rain this spring and summer and my parents have had problems with water in their basement. So I thought they were trying to keep water from flooding the basement again... Not this time though, she and my dad were in the basement because a tornado was headed for Manhattan. It struck the west side of town the hardest. It leveled a hardware store, self storage facility and many homes on that side of town it also did major damage to a car dealership. It then moved over the Kansas State University campus where it did $20 million dollars worth of damage according to the university president. The tornado hit the small town of Chapman (about 30 miles west) first and destroyed about 75-80% of that town and then headed for Manhattan. I lived in Manhattan most of my life and have never seen anything close to this. The tornado was categorized as an F4...the second strongest on the Fujita Scale. According to projecttornado.com an F4 is...

F4...Devastating tornado...207-260 mph
Well-constructed houses leveled; structures with weak foundations blown off some distance; cars thrown and large missiles generated.

Luckily my parents "weathered" the storm. They didn't even lose power. They are very lucky as the storm hit the Kansas State campus and they are not to far from that area. I have included some pictures that I got from the local newspaper of the devastation. I am grateful everyone was okay. Manhattan had just "survived" a huge hail storm with baseball size hail last week and now a tornado... I love Kansas and the Midwest but at times like these I don't miss it one bit.

Waters True Value Hardware store, the store has only been there about 18 months.

Amherst Self Storage Facility

Car flipped over.

Picture of the subdivision that was hardest hit by the storm.

Piece of wood "blown" into a car in the subdivision hardest hit by the storm.