A sudden storm left Walter and Peggy Barnett staring at a mess outside their rural home east of Jameson on Wednesday afternoon, after violent winds ripped through the property and dropped a power line across State Highway P.

The Barnetts live about 2.5 miles east of Jameson, a small Missouri community roughly 80 miles northeast of Kansas City, and they were among the people looking for answers after three tornadoes were reported Wednesday north of the metro. For the couple, the storm was not an abstract weather alert. It was the moment they stepped outside and found uprooted trees, splintered limbs and a live line thrown into their yard.

Walter Barnett said he heard an alarm on his phone at about 4 p.m. and moved to the front door. The strongest winds were already building. The couple said they did not make it to the basement before the storm hit, and Peggy Barnett later compared the force inside the house to “somebody had a vacuum unit hooked up to the whole house trying to suck the insides out.” Walter Barnett said magnets were pulled off the refrigerator and that he nearly was pulled out the door.

Neighbors came to help after the winds passed, and Howard Bailey brought a skid loader to clear the driveway. That mattered because the surrounding property was a wreck while the house itself was left untouched. Trees were uprooted, limbs were splintered and the power line had to be dealt with first before the Barnetts could start picking through what was left.

That contrast is what makes the damage near Jameson stand out. Walter Barnett said a tornado damaged a shed on the property about 10 years ago, but this time the storm seems to have missed the house even as it tore up everything around it. The Barnetts still faced a clean-up that began with debris and may end with a formal tornado confirmation.

KCTV5's First Warn 5 Weather team said there were three reported tornadoes in the viewing area Wednesday, all of them north of the Kansas City metro, and the reports came with strong video evidence. The National Weather Service can take a day or two to confirm which storm caused the damage near Jameson, plot a path and assign a rating. For the Barnetts, the immediate answer was already on the ground: a hard-hit yard, a blocked driveway and a long day of clearing what the wind left behind.