BOWIE, Texas — Three tornadoes destroyed homes, barns and buildings across Montague County Monday.
The National Weather Service confirmed three EF1 tornadoes after surveying the damage.
One tornado near Nocona had max speeds increased to 110 mph. Another, southwest of Bowie peaked at 95 mph winds, and a third, east of town, had 100 mph winds.
The county’s emergency management director said five people were taken to the hospital with injuries, but all are expected to be OK.
Minutes before the tornado, just west of Highway 59, Brooke Hunter took shelter in a cellar two houses down from hers, listening to music to avoid the sounds of the storm. After it passed, she found her barn, trailers and RV all lifted, tossed across the street and scattered.
“I was in total shock,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I just stood there.”
Her focus, though, wasn’t on what was lost, but what she found. In fields across the street, she recovered her son’s county fair belt buckle. He just won first place in January for a grand champion swine named Ham.
“This is what my kids do,” Hunter said. “This is what they love to do.”
It’s the small wins that get people through a long recovery.
For Tera Posey, that win was when she discovered the dogs and dog inside her barn were still alive, even though the barned had been ripped apart and thrown up against her home.
“I thought they were gone,” she said. “There’s no way.”
As the EF1 tornado swept across east Bowie, she huddled in the hallway with her five young children.
“They were crying. Everyone was crying. I was praying, and I was just like ‘Jesus put your hand over us. Keep us safe’,” she said. “I thought our whole roof was going to come off, and I was just really scared.”
The east Bowie tornado had a clearly defined path about 50-100 yards wide and stretched for miles moving northeast.
John Tune and his wife Kathy lived at the other end of the path. They were in the kitchen when the winds picked up.
“Us being in the middle of everything collapsing down on top of us probably saved our lives,” John Tune said. “The glass breaks and I go flying across the room. I was thinking, 'This is it. I’m gone.'”
They spent two years building the home that was flatted in two minutes. Rain poured in after the ceiling was ripped off. They were stuck in the debris until rescue crews pulled them out. John Tune's foot and chest were hurt, too.
“I looked up and the sky looked bad, and things were blowing and I got back underneath,” Kathy Tune said. “If it wasn’t for my faith in God, I don’t even know because it is rough.”
Neighbors shared how church groups and strangers worked to pick up debris, trim trees and help recover belongings. The Texas Department of Emergency management is asking anyone impacted to report the damage.