Five tornadoes ripped through Greene County last week and one family shares their experience as one of the tornadoes hit their property.

John Thompson says he wanted to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather, over 70 degrees, and he had just returned to his family’s farm south of Jefferson. About an hour later, Thompson says his father, Charlie, just returned from the grocery store after his final cancer treatment and tells Raccoon Valley Radio the clouds got dark. Then they received tornado warning alerts on their phones. John points out, his dad went outside and then rushed back in saying he saw the twister. 

“I was urgently trying to get him down into the basement. My brother called him and he stopped in the kitchen and waited. I ran to the basement and came back up to get him and he made it about halfway down the stairs, and we started hearing glass breaking, heard some crashes, and it didn’t seem that bad.”   

John says at one point some debris came through the kitchen wall, hit a cabinet and knocked some bowls on the ground. He describes the destruction after the tornado passed.

“I walked around in the dark and saw pretty much all of the trees down, the corn crib that’s probably been through over 100 years, probably 120 years, was all over the side yard, our little side garage was gone, all of our outbuildings were gone, a tree out front – it’s probably 150 years old – it was laying across the road. We realized the windows were out and I saw the service line was all wrapped up in lumber and wasn’t going to be coming on. We figured out a plan to get out of there.”  

John adds, Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams checked on them and then they headed to Boone to stay for the night. The National Weather Service reports the top speed of the tornado that went through the Thompson’s property reached 120 miles per hour.