He checked his own house first — nothing missing. He also checked his neighbors’ houses, but the debris didn’t seem to come from those either.
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“What I think it is — is a piece of the under sheeting from the roof and then some interior paneling also,” Cottrel said. “It might’ve been from the Base.”
Now, he and his wife Pam, who is a columnist for the News-Sun, are wondering whose house the pieces came from — and how whoever lived in the house is handling the aftermath of the storm.
“We were extremely fortunate that we just did not happen to be in the track of the storms this time,” he said.
Storm Center 7 meteorologists mapped the closest confirmed tornado to the Cottrel house and identified it as the EF-3 tornado that ravaged Riverside and Beavercreek at close to 150 mph, before it ended in Xenia Twp.
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The tornado never crossed into Clark County — the path was about 15 miles away from Rebert Pike.
The tornado was one of more than a dozen that touched down on Memorial Day.
Storm Center 7 Meteorologist Dontae Jones said while debris being carried into another county is rare — it can definitely happen.
“A lot of lighter objects that are sucked into the storm can be held and suspended as long as the storm survives,” Jones said. “In fact, back in 2011 there was a tornado outbreak that carried debris hundreds of miles in the southeastern part of the United States.”
Cottrel said he’s not sure if he’ll keep the pieces of debris as a historical artifact, but at the very least —
“It makes a great conversation piece.”
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