4 Tornadoes Tear Across N. Arizona, Damage Homes

The extreme weather came from a low-pressure system that has been parked over Central and Southern California. The system was expected to weaken as it drifts northward.

A man walks through a Bellemont, Ariz., backyard after a tornado swept through the community west of Flagstaff on Wednesday, Oct. 6. (AP Photo/Felicia Fonseca)

(AP)

Arizona, however, was the hardest hit. On Tuesday, storms ripped out trees and broke windows in metropolitan Phoenix, flooded roadways, shut airports and dented cars and shattered windows with hail bigger than golf balls in some places.

On Wednesday, semitrailers were sitting along the side of Interstate 40. High winds cast dozens of cars of a freight train off the tracks in Bellemont around 6:30 a.m. No one was injured and the cars did not contain any hazardous materials.

About 30 homes were so badly damaged that they were uninhabitable and the people who lived in them were evacuated, authorities said. A shelter was set up for them.

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Minutes before the first tornado in Bellemont touched down, Jeff Cox was standing in his garage, his children nestled in bed. Rain and hail pounded hard against the windows and a fierce wind made it look like houses were swaying.

Then Cox heard a deafening sound and ducked beneath a flatbed trailer carrying two all-terrain vehicles.

The tornado struck, pushing the trailer two feet, tearing off the roof of nearly his entire home and throwing it and other debris into the nearby forest.

"It was so loud, it sounded like a big boom," his wife, Jennifer, said through tears, wiping water from collectables she was trying to salvage.

It was directly in the path of the tornado and the most damaged.

Rain later drenched nearly everything inside.

At Brad and Dani Stricker's home, the kitchen cabinets were knocked from the walls of their ranch-style house, the refrigerator was tipped over, every window in the house was busted and the frame was exposed with drywall and glass covering the carpet.

Brad Stricker said he and his wife were lying in bed when the tornado struck, spraying shattered glass. But nothing hit them.