Aumsville, OR tornado
Credit: kgw.comAUMSVILLE, Ore. - A tornado struck the small town of Aumsville on Tuesday, tearing roofs off buildings, hurling objects into vehicles and homes and uprooting trees.


No injuries were reported. There were early reports that some people had been trapped in cars.

Aumsville, Oregon Radar

The heaviest damage seemed to be in the central part of this town of 3,560 people 45 miles south of Portland.

"We saw a trampoline fly over a church. It was like the Wizard of Oz," said Gara Adams, who works at Neufeldt's Restaurant on Main Street in Aumsville.

MaryAnn Hills, Aumsville City Administrator, said a plumbing fixture store across the street from City Hall was severely damaged.

"There's maybe a quarter of the building left," Hills said. "Most of it ended up on the house next door."

Hills said people in her office listened as "the loudest hail I've ever heard" pounded the roof of the building. Then, a funnel cloud appeared and debris ripped from the roofs of houses began to fly toward downtown.

Tornado slams lawn chair into windshield in Aumsville, OR
Image credit: kgw.com

Gerald Macke, of the National Weather Service in Portland, said the tornado touched down at about 11:45 a.m, according to reports from emergency managers who spotted the funnel cloud.

Macke said the emergency managers reported seeing people trapped in cars by fallen power lines and trees knocked over.

The weather service has sent storm gathering teams to the area, who will use GPS devices to help measure the breadth of the storm and its wind speed.

EF1 or EF2 tornado damage in Aumsville, OR
Image credit: kgw.com

The storm didn't stretch far beyond the city's borders. At the Wooden Nickel, five miles away in Sublime, Ore., bartender Bobbie Wolf said she didn't hear anything and only noticed that the power to her restaurant went out.

"We didn't have a tornado here," Wolf said. "There was rain and the wind blew, we lost power, but that was it."