That bottom left photo...
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 11, 2021
Building on one side of the parking lot has no damage except a few missing shingles. Less than 100ft away, the building across the parking lot had been blown off its slab, clean down to the carpet.
Tornadoes are freaky. https://t.co/3jxq6TEC39
Just before he'd done that, I'd been in Google Maps' satellite view, locating the candle factory that had been hit.
With the distinctive x-shaped building (an old folks' home) from his drone photos and the location of the candle factory to serve as endpoints, I went back to the Googlesat and looked at the track the twister must have taken through the city...
Yikes. That was a bullseye right through the town square.
More news and photos have obviously since been released and it did indeed basically track right through the town square.
CNN has some current satellite shots in composite photos with sliders for before and after, and it's pretty terrible looking; Dresden-esque, Hiroshima-like. The total magnitude of loss won't be known for another day or two at least.
Google's satellite view can sometimes show sobering things. I was nosing around Pensacola Naval Air Station the other day to see if the Blue Angels were home when the satellite flew over (they were) and in the subdivisions nearby I wondered "Why are so many roofs blue? Ohhh..."
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