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It was such a mess up there, guys. I was filming when a storm spotter caught up with me and we decided to go north into Hugo. You could see the jagged bases on the clouds and a solid rain line ahead of us as we went north and we had emergency vehicles passing us several times in just a few miles. When we got up there and parked we were probably just two minutes or so behind the tornado.. There were cars off the road on hwy 61 and the police were in the process of blocking it off so we pulled into a parking lot to talk to the storm spotter again. After giving me his contact info we took a minute to look around and we were parked next to the last upright power pole, all the rest had come down and the lines were torn free. We started looking to the sky again then and there was a second storm cell moving in from the southwest so we started looking to go back south hoping to get out of the area before it moved in. We failed.
We got less than a mile from the tornado damage before we were hit with a true "blinding" rain and wind like I've never driven through. There was so much rain, debris and hail that we nearly had to stop the car. We ended up with golfball size + hail flying horizontally and pounding the car, we've got some pretty good dents down the passenger side of the car to show for it as well as the roof, hood and trunk. When we got clear of the mess and pulled over to talk to the spotter he had a broken windshield and even worse body damage than we did. What was amazing is that the door frames/ window pillars (Dodge Intrepid) were dented in so far that the dents stick out on the inside of the door. Thankfully the storm that hit us came through south of the tornado zone so those people didn't have to get pounded again.
I can't help feeling bad for the family that lost a little one in the tornado, all of them are now hospitalized with serious/ critical injuries. The report on the news said that their whole house was thrown into a pond and smashed. Those of you who are inclined to should send a prayer for that family and the others up there who lost their homes. I thank God that we showed up after the funnel and not a few minutes earlier whenever I think of the cars thrown off the road up there.
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