Jerry Stephenson and his family were home Tuesday night when storms rolled through the area.
“The weather service warnings went off, and of course everyone’s phone went off. That’s always a little bit scary, right? And I swear to gosh it was like less than a minute,” Stephenson said.
His family hurried into the basement.
“We heard cracking, the trees and everything that had fallen, and then we came out and saw this,” he said about the tree damage in his yard. “People tell you it sounds like a train, and it really does. It’s scary.”
He had several tree branches snapped by what the National Weather Service said was an EF-0 tornado.
The trunk of one tree cracked and sent it crashing to the ground in front of Stephenson’s home. Another tree was uprooted and smashed the duck house.
The Stephensons’ three ducks are all okay.
Stephenson started some cleanup on Wednesday.
“But that’s not one I can do myself, unfortunately,” Stephenson said of the large uprooted tree.
Video shared by the National Weather Service showed another EF-0 tornado spinning through a field off of Bauder School Road in Portersville, just a few miles away from Stephenson’s home.
There was also another confirmed EF-0 tornado in Pulaski, Lawrence County.
“For Western PA, this will be our 20th, 21st, and 22nd tornado,” said Meteorologist Matt Brudy with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh.
It’s an active season for tornadoes so far in the whole area NWS Pittsburgh covers. Brudy said last year, their coverage area only saw 11 tornadoes.
In 2024, the region saw a record-breaking 29 tornadoes.
“So we’re fluctuation in the numbers, but specific trends to point to in that scientifically, nothing that we’re aware of at this point,” Brudy said.
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