Thunderstorm’s powerful winds carry horse stable from one pasture to another in Oakdale
Like so many other Stanislaus County residents, Berry and Christi VanDyke and Christi’s mother, Peggy Gumm, awoke early Tuesday morning to an alarm sounding on their phones that warned of a tornado threat.
They huddled in their hallway, away from windows, waiting out the worst of the storm as the wind rattled their windows and rain pounded their roof. Christi said it was close to sunrise by the time things settled down and she was able to fall back asleep. But it wasn’t long before Peggy was knocking on her door.
Peggy led her daughter out the front door and pointed to something new in their pasture: a horse stable, more than 100 feet long, that had been in their neighbor’s yard the day before.
“Woke up to find this building in our pasture this morning and it’s not ours!!” Christi wrote on social media.
The storm carried the heavy, metal-framed structure over a 5-foot-tall fence and into the VanDyke’s pasture. The metal fence was not damaged but two cedar trees along the fence line were sheared in half.
The family believes the stable overturned at least once before landing upright because there was grass lodged in the stable’s metal roof. Despite the stable taking flight, its wooden siding remained largely intact.
Berry said he spoke to neighbors later Tuesday and was told the stable had been hooked up to water and electricity but was never mounted to the ground.
The National Weather Service office in Sacramento on Wednesday confirmed the incident was the result of “straight line wind” with estimated peak speeds of 75 mph just after 4 a.m.
The NWS also confirmed that a EF-1 tornado touched down near Milton, about 30 miles to the north. It uprooted multiple trees.
This story was originally published January 10, 2023 at 4:13 PM.
