New Jersey's largest dairy farm nearly destroyed in tornado

The morning after one of the most intense tornados recorded in New Jersey history all but demolished the largest dairy farm in the state, owners Marianne and Wally Eachus looked at each other and just cried.

“What are we going to do?” they asked one another.

Just 12 hours earlier, the couple was eating dinner when cellphone weather alerts warned that a tornado was imminent. The clouds were intense and swift, then there was a sound like a freight train, Marianne recalled.

They ran to the basement just in time for the EF3 tornado, one of seven that ripped through parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania during last week’s storm, to pass over. Barely three minutes went by, and it was gone.

When the owners of Wellacrest Farms in Mullica Hill, a suburb of Philadelphia, came out of their basement along with other family on their homestead, they saw that two of their massive grain silos had toppled over. Some barns were completely reduced to concrete, roofs ripped off others, equipment was demolished, uprooted trees crashed into the old farmhouse.

“There was just metal, wood, debris, everywhere,” Eachus said.

And hundreds of cows were trapped under collapsed barns. Thirteen have died, a couple dozen more suffered injuries. A crew was milking when the twister ripped through and had only seconds to hide and hold on. They saw several cows swallowed by the funnel. Up to 100 cows were still missing Monday morning.

Somehow, there were no additional deaths on the dairy farm from the tornado. But the storm also produced historic rain and massive flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida that killed at least 50 people in six Eastern states, more than half in New Jersey alone.

Those drenching rains came at the farm and for hours, Eachus and her family, joined by neighbors and friends,...