For a week that should have been Christmas with the Keegans, Vicki Keegan recognized what was going on Wednesday evening.

"It was black," Keegan said about the sky outside of the family's home near Milburn and Tower Terrace, north of Cedar Rapids. "We didn't realize that facing east and things started to fly. I said 'we gotta go to the basement'. I could hear glass as we were going down. Within thirty seconds, you can tell it had stopped."

What drivers in the area saw were utility crews and firefighters working to clear the major roads. Twisted and downed power lines filled Milburn Road while trees and branches cluttered Tower Terrace, a major access road over Interstate 380 and to North Center Point Road and Hiawatha.

"Possible twister and straight-line winds and a lot of trees and power lines down," said Cpt. Sheme Fairlie of the Cedar Rapids Fire Department, as she and other fire personnel began to open Tower Terrace again to traffic at about 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

Yet the damage that could not be seen from the road was the most startling.

Kevin Humpfer kept his brand-new 2016 Jayco Jay Flight, a luxury camper, on the Keegan's property. He said he's only had it a few months.

Humpfer walks us through the damage with his Jay Flight in about seven or eight different piles.

A hitch sat in the cold dirt.

"Here's the frame," he said, flashing a light on it.

"It was 400 feet back that way?" I asked, pointing closer to the Keegan's shed.

"Correct."

Humpfer said that his wife had gotten a phone call about what took place.

As a handful of family and friends were gathering behind the home she has lived in for decades, Vicki Keegan offered some wise words about this rather unexpected storm.

"If you can keep it out of the house, that's fine," Keegan said of the winds. "We're fortunate. Things can always be cleaned up."

As of late Wednesday, clean up crews still had Milburn Road closed, south of Tower Terrace, to work on getting the bent and mangled power lines out of the roadway.