Storm damage the day after a tornado in Mineral Wells

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:00]We're in Mineral Wells, where Monday afternoon a strong storm system came through. And the damage now that the sun is out is just it's widespread. I want to show you some of the structures that are damaged right behind me. You can see some exterior walls of this industrious area just caved in. Some of these structures are metal structures and on the way out here we also saw some structures that had beams made of metal. What that tells me is that these buildings were sturdy. But wind speeds of over 100 miles per hour can very well do this. Exterior walls caved in, still some studs showing up.

[00:00:40]That means interior walls also damaged.

[00:00:42]This consistent with wind speeds of anywhere between 110 to 130 miles per hour. That puts this as the apparent tornado rating of about an EF2. I want to also show you this tree up here. So this tree, you can see it snapped at the top. This is also indicative of very strong winds. A lot of times we see that leaves of trees act as sails, like a sailboat, catch the wind and the sheer strength of the wind will snap an even healthy tree. And this is one of the smaller trees that I've seen, but on the drive up we definitely saw some larger trees with very similar look to it. Also looking at some trees that are kind of turned the other way, that's actually also indicative of rotation with these winds. So just more and more convincing that this was actually a tornado that caused this damage. We will get a better insight as the day goes on. The National Weather Service is set to survey this area sometime this morning and we'll get an official rating later today.