For Jerry Boren, it was quick and it was a close call.
[Ads /]
"All of a sudden I looked out and that wind was whipping," he said.
He was inside his home when a massive tree uprooted and toppled over just feet away from his front door. It was just that much force, and strong winds Boren says managed to change the course of a 50-foot Chinese Elm.
"It was leaning in the wrong direction so it had to raise it up and deposit it in the other direction I just couldn't believe it," he said.
It created devastation in a matter of minutes.
"I was amazed," he said.
[Ads /]
And so was Kenneth Thompson. He lives 20 miles away in Hanford and recorded video when the windstorm swept across his garage.
"I thought it was a tornado that's what I thought," he said. "I thought it just touched down right behind me."
It tore off his metal roof and sent it flying to a nearby field.
"That's where it landed, and it cartwheeled over there," Thompson said.
Video from Skyview 30 shows even more of the devastation. A poultry farm in Caruthers where turkeys were housed was severely damaged.
[Ads /]
The National Weather Service says despite what some might think, no tornadoes touched down - just 70 mile per hour winds.
"What happened last night is we had a continuous line of storms move through at a particular rate," Jerald Meadows with the NWS explained.
Still, outside of all the damage left behind, Boren says he has a lot to be grateful for.
"I'm thankful for the fact that I wasn't in Texas or Florida," he said. "This is just nothing to what those folks back there went through."
And Boren says he is especially thankful for the PG&E crews. He says within 30 minutes of the power being knocked out they were out here working on repairs, and by 10 p.m. Tuesday morning he says it was all restored.