Wesley and Marian Barber moved to the corner of Goff and Northrup Roads in Smithfield, in Madison County, in 2013.  

Just a year later, on July 8, 2014, they recall watching a strong tornado from their kitchen window.

An EF-2 twister was headed straight toward their home.

"Looking out the window and we see chaos," said Wesley Barber. "Debris just blowing by here and we thought more or less a windstorm and after it was all over with, we looked out toward where the garage was sitting and it was just gone."

The tornado popped up just below a ridge and in four minutes it destroyed two mobile homes on Goff Road. 

It then took out the Barbers' garage before it lifted another home off its foundation on Northup Road and hurled it across the road. 

By the end, the storm left four people dead.

"This tragic event effected all of us in Madison County, not just the residents up there. My heart goes out to the family of the victims there," then-Madison County Sheriff Allen Riley said at the time. 

Spectrum News staff were some of the first members of the media to visit the area hours after the storm. 

"The day that this tornado took place, very rare.  It produced an EF-2 tornado, very strong, the wind gusts were projected to be upwards of 135 miles per hour," said meteorologist Vanessa Richards. 

Spectrum News recently returned to Smithfield to speak to the owner of one of the mobile homes that were destroyed. He decided to rebuild in the same spot after the twister took the lives of his daughter, granddaughter, and aunt five years ago. 

"When you lose a 4-month-old baby, when you lose a family, there's no damage like that," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at the time while surveing the damage.

This was indeed a quick moving storm and one that few people, including the Barbers, had time to prepare for. 

"We just didn't understand what was going on, because we turned on the news and Morrisville said there was nothing going on because it was under their radar and they didn't know it.  So, we didn't know it either," said Marian Barber. 

"The radar beam takes a long time to get this far," Richards explans. "The radar station is in Binghamton. It shoots a beam and takes five minutes to do a full scan of the atmosphere.  This storm formed within that five-minute window and because of the elevation, it wasn't seen until it was already happening."

For central New York, this isn't something you see much of at all. In fact, the Smithfield tornado of 2014 went on to be the deadliest in New York State since 1950. 

"This can happen anywhere. That's the biggest takeaway is that no one is immune to this, everyone can see damage like this," said Richards.  

The Barbers have been married for 65 years and are thankful the damage didn't take their lives.  

"You better be prepared, because you never know what's going to happen. What happened here never should have happened but it did happen. The only thing I can say is that I praise the Lord and God we're still here today and we're together yet," said Wesley Barber. 

The National Weather Service estimates the tornado traveled about two-and-a-half miles before dissapating near State Route 31. 

Light debris from the destroyed structures was found up to 5 miles away.