Unexpected Tornado Visits the Neighborhood

Video from the McDonald's in Webb City, Missouri:

Well, there you have it - an honest-to-goodness, real-life tornado out of nowhere.  The Storm Prediction Center and the National Weather Service were no help in warning anyone about this storm.  Not only was there no warning issued, but the area was not even under a watch.  The only way to know this one was coming was to see it with your own eyes.  That's unusual with today's technology.  Even our local meteorologists were caught off guard.

I saw this one in my rear view mirror, at first thinking it was a fire that produced a smoke that blended really well with the cloud...but when the "smoke" stopped, the cloud never dissipated, and when the "smoke" reformed, I knew it for what it was - an actual tornado. It was a few minutes before the storm sirens were finally activated.  I waited out the storm before returning home, realizing that this thing might have done some damage in our own neighborhood (It's hard to determine how far away these things are just by sight.).

​Sure enough, there were some trees down, some on houses and some on cars.  It appeared that most of the damage was done to vehicles crushed under the weight of trees (since we live in a forest).  After walking around and talking to neighbors, I could see that at least one house was also badly damaged when a fully-developed oak fell in such a way as to slice it in half.

As for our own house, it still sits about a block away from tree damage to the east and roof damage to the south. We were not even among the thousands who lost power.  The only result of the storm for us was an added twig that landed on the garage, easily swept away in the next rainstorm.