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The tornado ripped out side windows of the farm shed in Killag and bent the frame and steel girders.

A large skylight was suctioned from the roof leaving no debris inside.

Some of the damage to the roof of the house caused by a flying wooden palette.

The heavy palette was lifted over a large farm shed onto the roof of the house.

The missing skylight in the agricultural building.

A freak mini-tornado struck a house and farm shed at Killag, Duncormick in Wexford on Tuesday night, sucking out skylights, bending steel girders and smashing roof tiles.

" It’s lucky there was no-one in the yard at the time or they could have been killed”, said tillage farmer and agricultural contractor Nick White, who lives opposite the site of the well-known Bannow and Rathangan Show.

He was awoken around midnight by a loud noise which sounded like heavy thunder directly overhead but he didn’t discover the damage to his property until early the following morning when he went outside.

 “It must have gone around the side of the shed because it lifted heavy wooden fertiliser pallets that were stacked against the shed and carried them high up into the air – one of them was  lying about 150 metres away in the show field across the road”, he said.

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"One pallet landed on a hedge and another on the roof of the house, damaging the slates and felt and more pallets were thrown around the place.. A  large skylight and two side windows in the shed were sucked outwards – there was no debris inside. It even bent the steel trusses on the shed.”

"There was no trace of the skylights left inside. They were pulled up into the air, which shows the force of the suction. Luckily, no-one was out in the yard or they could have been injured or killed. If it had gone through the house it could have been a different story.

The missing skylight in the agricultural building.

"The roof of the shed is bellied out about six inches and the main door of the shed was also warped inwards with the force of the suction from above. The purlins in the frame were bent upwards.

"When I went around the back of the house in the morning, there were slates and pallets on the ground and I didn’t realise what had happened at first”, said Nick.

"It had to have been a tornado. I’ve been waiting to hear of it happening elsewhere in the locality but there have been no other reports. I would say it went from south to north but there is no damage done anywhere else in the area.

"It’s flat land here. The wind farm is near us but there doesn’t seem to be any damage done to the windmills. I would say it happened in a matter of seconds. You can see from the path of uprooted hawthorn trees and broken branches and bushes where it went through a side ditch in the show field into the next field.”

Some of the damage to the roof of the house caused by a flying wooden palette.

"We’re lucky in that we have plenty of maize fields ready to cut and from what I can see so far, I don’t think it went through them.”

Nick said he would often see whirlwinds in fields while carrying out agricultural contracts on land but he believes this was definitely a tornado due to the force of it

"The pallets weigh about 40-50 kg  and they would have to have been pulled very high up into the air to land where they did. A lot of force would have been needed.

The heavy palette was lifted over a large farm shed onto the roof of the house.

"Our house is on the opposite side of the shed which is 30ft high and 100ft long and it would have taken a lot of force to lift palettes that distance from the other side of the shed onto the roof of the house. The pallet that landed on the roof came over parked cars and jeeps.

"The noise woke me up. It was like the shaking of thunder. The house was shaking nearly. It must have been very localised because we had the recycling bin out on the road for collection in the morning and it wasn’t stirred and there was a palette of empty spray cans in the yard that didn’t move. It had to have been a tornado."

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