The weather station says that the tornado touched the tree tops but never touched down on the ground. Also the hail over 1.5 inch diameter was the biggest ever recorded in Austin.
Sunshine Community Garden sustained minor damage. My tomatoes plants with small tomatoes lost a lot of green tomatoes. The larger plants had damage on individual fruit but the fruit was not knocked off. The leaves on the squash, cucumbers, eggplant, peepers, chard, etc were somewhat shredded but they should come back. I picked beets but couldn’t used the leaves becuase they were too shredded.
 
The National Weather Service reported hail as large as four inches in diameter a few miles north of downtown Austin, service forecaster Pat McDonald said. Rose added that it may be a record size on behalf of hail that landed inside city limits.
National Weather Service officials say they don’t think a tornado touched down in the city. They point to radar images of the storm, which indicated it was a super cell with punching winds that blasted a wide area stretching about from Lake Austin to East Austin as well as 35th Street to just south of the Colorado River.
But insurance adjusters as well as a professional storm tracker say some of the tree damage suggests the presence of a tornado that dangled across the treetops on behalf of some distance but never touched down.
“If you look at the epicenter of the storm track, the way the trees are topped, twisted off rather than blown, that indicates a tornado rather than straight or sheer winds, or a microburst,” said Mark Nelson, a meteorologist as well as consultant who surveyed as well as photographed damage in Central Austin on Thursday….