I was actually on the autopista passing La Vega about 5 minutes after the tornadoes hit! I had no idea what had happened. It was hot and sunny in Santiago when I hit the highway towards Santo Domingo...about 5 minutes outside of town it started drizzling and the sky ahead looked very dark... a few minutes later I started seeing tree debris on the highway, I thought they had been trimming branches and just hadn't picked them up...then the rain got a little harder and traffic got bad...and ultimately stopped...what I thought was due to an accident caused by the rain, was a huge tree lying almost all the way across the southbound side of the highway.
For the next 20 or so miles, at different spots, there were huge signs, massive trees, and all kinds of debris strewn about, parts of smaller bridges, especially railings, were twisted and/or missing... At one point traffic was redirected to the other side of the road...then about a mile later, returned to the correct side. There were no police or emergency crews at that point...not sure if they came after, but I had no idea what had happened. It looked like a hurricane, or several tornadoes had swept through the area, but neither made sense to me at the moment.
When I arrived in SD I asked several people if they had heard anything about the weather in that area, but no one had. I didn't find out what had happened until I read it in the news the next day. Tornadoes reported in La Vega at 2:40pm, I was stopped by the first big tree in the road in La Vega at 2:45...VERY freaky experience...
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