A line of severe thunderstorms with damaging (convective) winds moved
across Pennsylvania Saturday evening. Lots of damage reported across the
state... but perhaps one of the most significant occurred very near where I
live in the Middle Susquehanna Valley of PA. I completed a few hour storm
survey in the biting cold wind chills this morning... in upper
Northumberland county. Talked with some fire department personal and a few
other people... damage is confined to a relatively small area on the south
end of the village of McEwensville and into neighboring Delaware township
(Northumberland county). Power out to all in the area. Numerous trees
down... several dozen altogether either snapped or uprooted. Multiple
buildings damaged of varying extents. A house which was being remodeled
had its entire roof blown off and scattered downwind. A couple power poles
were snapped nearby, with lines ripped down across the road. At another
property, a fallen tree cut a shed in half effectively crushing the center
of it, damaging a motorcycle inside. Another shed across the street was
blown apart.. with the walls, floor, and roof scattered across a lawn. Yet
another shed, this one made of sheet metal, was totally ripped apart with
the debris scattered downwind. Elsewhere.... a very large barn had the
entire large "A"-frame roof lifted off and thrown into a corn field across
the street where it broke into many pieces. Several other barns in the
area had varying degrees of roof damage. One barn, albeit old, completely
collapsed into the below ground foundation. A garage, holding a car inside
it, was blown off its foundation somewhat and tilted... so the structure
leans at an angle now. Windows were also blown out of the house on the
property. Another property up the road had two large poles downed, and
shingles ripped off the house roof. Then there was one farm where large
chunks of sheet metal was found in the driveway and hanging from power
lines. It is unknown where this came from, certainly not from that
property as it was not damaged... and there is no farm immediately next
door. It may have come from a farm about a 1/8 to 1/4 mile down the
field. The investigation shows thunderstorm winds are at fault. ALL
debris was blown FROM the W/WSW as the line of convection came through. No
rotation or convergence was noted anywhere across the scene... and some
divergence was noted in tree fall patterns actually. Clearly a
thunderstorm wind event... both seen from the onsite survey and from the
atmospheric setup that day. Strong winds from aloft were mixed to the
surface in the convection.
Well the severe weather got an early start in PA this year... who knows
what's ahead for the upcoming severe season in PA. I've done many storm
surveys over the past several years in the area... so here's just another
to tack onto the list. And probably, more to come soon enough! Good luck
to all this season... and may safety be with all chasers!
-Greg Drollinger
Watsontown, PA
=============================================================
StormReports Email List -- For Options Including 1 Email/Day:
http://casi-internal/group/stormreports/join
TO UNSUBSCRIBE, EMAIL TO: stormreports-unsubscribe{at}casi-internal
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 31 2002 - 19:00:00 EST