Tornado hits Enumclaw

By Kevin Hanson and Brenda Sexton

Sunday afternoon’s wild weather left trees toppled and some roofs ruined as a tornado zig-zagged its way through a rural Enumclaw neighborhood.

The funnel cloud that had plenty of witnesses was not immediately termed a tornado by the National Weather Service, as no staff members were on duty due to the Labor Day holiday.

But there was no mistaking the funnel cloud for those who were witness to its damage.

"I saw it," said Ti Hendershot, an employee of GE and B Nursery, who was standing with Garry Horton in the showroom when the wind started to kick up.

"The width of the funnel cloud was the size of our showroom," Hendershot said.

The tornado uprooted trees on the property, swept the plastic sheeting from a number of greenhouses, set tree branches flying and left a swath of tipped-over shrubs in its wake.

The nursery is on Southeast 400th Street.

Not far away, Chuck Bender watched the events unfold.

“It was kind of crazy,” he said. Bender was sitting at a desk, looking out windows facing to the east, “and all of a sudden, trees started flying around the front of my house. It kind of came out of nowhere.”

Cruising his neighborhood around Westwood Elementary School after the funnel cloud disappeared, Bender took inventory. One neighbor told of a tin roof pulled from an outbuilding and flung 150 feet. He saw where trees had spun in the ground, root systems and all. Trees perhaps 18 inches across were bent and broken. In one case, a tree was snapped and fell onto a neighbor’s home.

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