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A tornado touched down on San Antonio's Northwest Side before 8 a.m. on Wednesday, leaving behind apartment damage near UT San Antonio 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's preliminary damage survey found the tornado reached EF-1 strength with peak winds of 100 mph. Survey crews determined it remained on the ground for about eight minutes, traveling roughly 4 miles before dissipating just north of The Rim.
UT San Antonio student, Luiz Maia, lives on the second floor of 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 building's attic was strewn across the complex.
Another UT San Antonio 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 carport.
The city said the most significant structural damage occurred at the Oasis Apartments, where a large section of the roof was torn from the building, damaging three fourth-floor apartments.
Displaced residents received assistance from the city, UT San Antonio, 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 suffered damage to the roof over its entrance and planned to reopen Thursday.
The facades and patio furniture of The Potbelly Sandwich Shop and Bluefin Sushi & Ramen at The Rim were also damaged, but all the businesses were closed when the twister blew through.
Despite ripping part of the roof from an apartment building and leaving a trail of damage across one of San Antonio's busiest commercial corridors, the tornado caused no serious injuries.
