Residents Shaun and Virginia Cavalliere opened the windows of their Gateway Boulevard home on Sunday afternoon and heard a loud boom. Seconds later, all hell broke loose.
Cavallieres told The Daily Independent on Monday morning that they open their windows whenever a rainstorm approaches to let in the sweet smell that precedes our desert storms.
This time, they got much more than they expected.
Their living room was filled with dirt within moments after a large gustnado swept across the desert floor and tore into their front yard. Everything in its path was thrown into the air, including their children’s swing set, which was destroyed and landed several feet away.
The aluminum table I had sat over there was sucked out and blown over there,” Shaun pointed across his yard.
Since they remained inside the house until the gustnado passed over them, the couple was able to capture a video of the gustnado in action with their Ringtone cameras.
Our neighbor’s garage literally lifted off the ground on one side,” Virginia said of the wooden structure that was heavily damaged by the wind on one side and buckled the heavy, metal door.
As Shaun walked through the front yard, he pointed out other storm damage such as the lattice that broke away and flew through the air before smashing into the side of the family’s car like a matchstick blowing in the wind. He stepped over the hundreds of figs and pomegranates torn from their branches and littered the yard.
Khodie, Angela, and Noah Cavalliere, the Cavalliere’s special-needs children, lived in the home.
While looking at the twisted remains of his beloved playground equipment, Khodie, 11, said, “All I saw was that big white thing (lattice) flying through the air.”.
When the storm first started, Angela, 21, said she was also frightened when her room’s walls began to shake.
“When I stood up, my legs were shaking, and I thought it was just me… But, I looked over at the TV, and it was shaking, so I knew it was me,” Angela explained.
The storm especially traumatized Virginia’s Autistic children.
The children just clung to me shaking as Angela went into a full-on meltdown.
They were destroyed by the gustnado, tossed wood panels into the air, picked up their neighbor’s metal shed and twisted it around a trailer parked next door, and most of the storm’s damage was reported to take place in Candee Coffee’s yard next door.
She operates a Therapeutic Horses business on her 10-acre property, which includes 40 horses and other animals. Following the destruction of a large tree in her front yard, the gustnado overturned a metal outhouse and headed straight for the stalls that had been occupied for decades.
“It picked up some of the shelters and peeled back some of the roofs. It looked like a tornado was coming,” Coffee said.
The stall holding Coffee’s stallion was completely destroyed in the storm, and he was found running around the property, requiring calming down. Coffee watched as the roof of another stall was torn away and flung into the air as she tried to catch him.
A neighbor screamed at her to run, but Coffee said she had already taken off by then as the twisted, metal roof came straight at her and landed where she had just been standing.
“All I could think about was how that roof was going to decapitate me,” said Coffee.
The roof snapped the nearby waterline, causing a fountain of water to erupt.
The hay bale was thrown about 30 feet, and several stalls were damaged or destroyed. A camper in the neighbor’s yard landed twisted inside her yard.
After taking down the power poles along Springer Street, the gustnado left Coffee alone.
Coffee held up his arms to reveal them covered in goosebumps, choking back tears as he said, “None of the animals were hurt. That’s a blessing.”
An anonymous individual who heard about Coffee’s plight donated a cash donation, and Home Depot has offered to donate some of the material needed to repair the stalls.
“What I really need are some volunteers to help me repair the damage since it’s just me and my handyman, Dave Creasey, here, and we’re getting older.” Coffee said.
The gustnado was a sneaky one, according to Meteorologist Brian Oches of the National Weather Service in Hanford, as it wasn’t picked up on their radar and they weren’t even aware it occurred.
Based on witnesses’ descriptions, Oches believes the event was either a gustnado or a thunderstorm outflow wind.
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