Five years ago Tuesday, an EF-4 tornado rolled through Hood County, tossing trees, smashing trucks and ripping homes from their foundation.
The heaviest damage – and all six fatalities in the storm – centered on the Rancho Brazos neighborhood, just east of Granbury. As many as 100 people were injured, officials reported.
The victims who died were identified as married couple Glenda Whitehead and Bob Whitehead, 63 and 69; Tommy Martin, 61; Leo Stefanski, 83; Jose Tovar Alvarez, 34; and Marjari Davis, 82.
The same storm produced a tornado in Cleburne in neighboring Johnson County, ripping roofs from homes, toppling power lines and stringing debris across town.
Further east, Ennis was slammed by a smaller tornado, which damaged dozens of buildings but resulted in only one minor injury.
The Hood County storm – an EF-4 out of a possible EF-5 – was the strongest storm to his North Texas in nearly 20 years, since Lancaster was hit by a similar-size tornado in 1994.
"It doesn't get much worse than that," Sheriff Roger Deeds told WFAA the following day, as he surveyed the Rancho Brazos neighborhood, most of which was rubble. "Some [people] were out here in mobile homes. Even in the site-built homes, when you have a wind as strong as what an F-4 will do, it's hard to hide from those."
"My guts were shaking," Granbury resident Suzi Mendoza told WFAA in 2015, as Hood County continued to recover from the twister.
Mendoza and her family narrowly missed the tornado's path, but their home and cars still suffered extensive damage.
One woman, standing in front of her destroyed home the next day, described how she rode out the storm, huddling in a bathtub with her Dachshunds and her 9-year-old son.
"It was like we were eating Hamburger Helper and just watching The Simpsons, and the next thing you know, there's a tornado in my house," she told WFAA.
Above is the raw video of the tornado that WFAA aired in 2013, along with coverage from the ground and aerial shots of the damage the next day. Below is more coverage from the WFAA archives of the storms in both Hood and Johnson counties.
