Overnight storms down FM 1162 barn
By BRENDA SOMMER bsommer@leader-news.com

L-N Photo by Brenda Sommer Close Call A mobile home, occupied by a farm worker, was wrapped in sheet metal when a barn was blown apart by storms before dawn Friday. The worker was not injured, but the barn was leveled, with some walls atop the mobile home, some lying flat on the ground, and sheets of metal strewn across fields at the FM 1162 farm of Gary Radley.

Gary Radley was counting his blessings Friday morning.

He and his family were in a two-story wooden house off FM 1162 at 4:20 that morning when a tornadic wind gust struck a large metal barn behind the home, leveling it.

"I knew it wasn't good - from the sound, you knew it was a tornado," Radley said later that morning. "It just kind of came down my driveway."

The blast left twisted sheet metal strewn about muddy cotton fields and intact walls smashed flat to the ground. Steel support poles set in concrete were ripped out of the ground.

"It just exploded my barn," Radley said.

A large section of the barn's side wall and roof ended up draped across half of a mobile home occupied by a farm hand, who was not injured in the melee. Oddly, graders, farm equipment, all-terrain vehicles and loads of other gear and tools inside the barn remained in place and appeared intact and unharmed.

L-N Photo by Brenda Sommer Can't Be Good For The Crop Sheet metal was strewn for acres across this cotton field after a barn was blown apart by storms before dawn Friday. The barn, approximately 100-foot by 150-foot, was leveled to the ground. No one was injured, although two occupied homes were sited with the barn. The incident took place at the FM 1162 farm of Gary Radley, near Hollywood Bottom.

Radley was staying at the old farm house with his wife and daughter because work is being done at their El Campo home. He said they were "pretty freaked out" when barn exploded.

Wharton County Emergency Management Officer Andy Kirkland said Radley's was the only report of significant damage resulting from Friday morning's pre-dawn waves of thunderstorms.

After inspecting the damage, Kirkland said it's hard to tell exactly what caused the barn's demolition.

"There's nothing out there that would say one way or another," he said. "The debris field being southwest to northeast - the same direction as the thunderstorms - sometimes is indicative of a tornado. But there's nothing wrapped … the metal is twisted, but that happens."

The storms Friday morning left up to an inch of rain in various parts of the county. Rainfall totals around the county as of 8 a.m. Friday include: Glen Flora, .6 inch; Wharton at 7 a.m., .79; East Bernard, .85; 2 miles northwest of El Campo, 1.01; and Louise, .71. The National Weather Service said weather should be clear and mild through mid-week, with highs in the low 80s and lows around 70 degrees.