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A tornado touched down on San Antonio's Northwest Side before 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, leaving behind apartment damage near UTSA and at two nearby shopping centers.
Those who experienced the dramatic weather event took to social media. The nerves of residents and passing motorists were rattled, but there were no deaths or serious injuries reported.
The National Weather Service is still investigating the tornado, but it appears it touched down near Hausman Road near UTSA and then moved northeast towards the Shops at La Cantera and the Rim, crossing near the I-10 1604 interchange in the process, and dissipating further north, near Fair Oaks and Bergheim.
UTSA student Luiz Maia, lives on the second floor of in the Oasis San Antonio apartments on UTSA Boulevard, and he heard and saw the fourth-floor roof torn off.
"You could hear just like a howl," he said. "The wind is just thrusting, thrusting. And then you just see the roof come up, the debris comes down, and the roof just starts spinning around."
He said a pool gazebo got blown away and insulation from the apartment's attic were strewn around.
UTSA student Noah Leal and his girlfriend, Angelica Favila, were in his fourth-floor apartment and ran to the bathroom at the sound of the tornado striking the building.
When they emerged shortly after, there was not much between them and the sky.
"I still had a ceiling, but it was the top roof that was completely gone and like damage to basically the surrounding areas of my apartment," he said.
He was also hoping to recover his vehicle from underneath a damaged car port.
Between 50 and 60 units were damaged at Oasis. Displaced residents were receiving assistance from first responders, the city, UTSA and the American Red Cross.
Most of the damage at the Shops at La Cantera appeared to be trees in parking lots. One large oak was sitting roots first into the air near the headquarters of the San Antonio Spurs, the Rock at La Cantera.
Dozens of trees and tree limbs were strewn across the parking lot of The Rim, where Lorenzo Sablan of Clean Scapes was busy cutting them up with his chainsaw and removing them to allow shoppers in vehicles to pass or park.
He suspects he and other tree trimmers will be busy in the area for a while. Sablan says when it comes to trimming a storm damaged tree, it is best to leave it up to professionals.
"We highly recommend that you don't do that, if you don't realize what you're looking at. Whenever, you're cutting a tree with pressure points and things like that, things can get bounded up or, you know, limbs could come shooting out the wrong way."
Trees were down near the Bass Pro Shop and the Santikos Palladium theater, which had damage to the roof of its entrance, but it will be showing movies again by Thursday.
The facades and patio furniture of The Pot Belly Sandwich Shop and Bluefin Sushi & Ramen at The Rim were also damaged, but all the business were closed when the twister blew through.
