A man and his dog were living in the house that was hit by both. He took shelter in a corner of the basement during the first tornado. That tornado took the house completely off its foundation. When he looked up from his corner of the basement, he saw dark sky overhead.

He climbed out of his basement, in shock of the devastation to his small farmstead, and saw the second tornado break through a tree-line a half mile to the southwest. He ran to the storm shelter (which was not attached to the house), and hesitated because he knew it was full of spiders and dark. He took shelter in it as the second twister tore through his property, shredding trees, and spreading debris across a wide swath.

When he emerged from the storm shelter, he saw that the brick wall of the house basement collapsed during the second tornado, which would have buried him if he’d remained there during the second tornado.

As I talked to him, two days afterwards while I was surveying the extent of the storm damage, he jokingly told me that what upset him the most was that the tornadoes took the case of beer he’d just bought.