Cooke Co. EF-1 tornado destroys several homes, barns

COOKE COUNTY, Texas (KXII) - He didn’t know it at the time, but when Dean Stokes looked out of his Gainesville home he saw an EF-1 tornado barreling towards him.

“We headed for the hallway where there are no windows,” Stokes said. “It sounded like a freight train and it lasted ten to fifteen seconds.”

Stokes said he could feel the pressure popping his ears and the winds rattling doors and windows of his home.

“The cows stampeded, they looked like they were in a panic attack.” Stokes said.

The tornado tore off the door of one of his barns on FM 1200, totally collapsing the other. His home, however, remained in tact.

“We were prepared for it, I think if it had been a stronger storm we would have had a different story,” Stokes said.

Stokes said the tornado ripped through his property, touched his house, hit the barn and continued into the pasture. He estimated the winds were travelling 100-100 mph.

Scott Schumaker watched the tornado make its way down Highway 51 into Era, so he packed up his family and drove to Muenster.

Tuesday morning he came home to the damage.

“I knew that the barn was a loss and I knew that the roof of our house was torn off,” Schumaker said. “As I was driving up here I could see some of our neighbors had had it worse than we had.”

Schumaker’s barn where they house their animals, store tractors, trucks and four-wheelers was torn open by the winds.

“It’s a setback and it’s a pain but we’ll get through it,” Schumaker said.

Their clean up ahead will involve hauling scrap metal torn off the barn to the dump before ultimately knocking it down. He said the interior damage of his home is still being assessed and their roof will have to be completely replaced.

West of Schumaker, his neighbor’s roof was completely ripped off and trees on the property were uprooted from the ground.

A dumpster is already set up in their yard as they worked to clean up the debris left by the tornado.

Cooke County Judge Steve Starnes was out surveying damage in the area.

He’s awaiting an assessment of the damage by the national weather service, but confirmed at least seven houses were damaged along with seven to ten barns.

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