OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – A thunderstorm rolled through Oklahoma City Wednesday night and violently damaged some residents’ properties.
Ski Island resident, Jerry Johnson said he was in his living room when all of sudden he noticed his two flags being ripped a part outside.
Johnson looked outside and saw waves slamming into his property.
“My sea wall looked like the ocean,” he said.
That’s when Johnson also saw a trailer had been thrown into a tree and tree limbs had been tossed around.
The worst part for Johnson, though, happened after the storm when he noticed a portion of his roof had been peeled off.
“That took this roof here and laid it back over the other part of the house. Like the whole thing is just nothing but insulation up there now,” said Johnson.
In Johnson’s 48 years of living at this house, he said he has never seen a storm roll through like that one.
The storm breezed right by Johnson’s home, but he said he watched it “turn around and come back” and that’s when the roof was ripped off.
“It just tore it all up and it was shaking the house and the dogs were nervous,” Johnson added.
Johnson has called his insurance company as well as a roofing company. He said he managed to get roof repair workers to his house last night and this morning.
The insurance company is expected to pay for most of the damages, but Johnson said he’ll have to pay a deductible which may be thousands of dollars.
Five minutes down the road in another neighborhood, other residents felt Johnson’s same pain in having their property damaged.
Ring Doorbell camera footage revealed a tree had snapped and fallen over on one man’s vehicles.
The vehicle owner declined an on camera interview, but told KFOR he and his wife were in their front yard merely 80 seconds before the storm hit.
He said they went to sit on the front porch and within a minute is when they heard the tree topple over.
It startled both of them, but he said it was more so a wave of emotions as that tree has been in their yard since they first moved in nearly 30 years ago.
For his family, that tree wasn’t just any tree, but one that held lifelong memories of family, friends, and their son who passed away in Iraq.
The two vehicles sustained damages to the roof and windows.
He said the vehicles are still drive-able, but that he wouldn’t take either on the highway.
The family said they were waiting on their insurance company to determine what’s next.
Some residents were lucky though and managed to make it through the storm damage-free.
Ski Island resident, Mackenzie Parker said the lake slightly overflowed into her yard, but nothing was damaged or destroyed in the storm.
Parker told KFOR it was scary to see and hear what was going on outside her window though.
“I could barely even see outside. It was coming down so hard that you could barely even see where the lake is. Like you could barely see the houses, so there was a point of too much water coming down. I heard some lightning. I heard some thunder. It was all so much,” added Parker.
Although Parker said it was peaceful at first to listen to the rain, she grew nervous and even got to a point where she asked herself, “Is this going to lead to extreme weather? Like, are we going to get a tornado or anything?”
News 4 Meteorologist, Aaron Brackett said the storm itself lasted about an hour, but the intensity of it only lasted a few minutes.
“Ski Island experienced what was most likely a down burst,” said Brackett. “That means you have the humidity pretty low. The temperature is pretty high and then that middle area, you get energy where the storm rushes all the air downward. It has nowhere to go, but it goes out and you get damaging winds on a localized scale.”
Based on videos of the storm sent in from News 4 viewers on Ski Island, Brackett said the wind speeds looked to be between 55 and 70 mph.
Brackett added the next couple of days will bring more rain.
No injuries have been reported at this time.