National Weather Service confirms EF-1 tornado touched down near Uniontown, taking the total to 5
In Fayette County, they are dealing with damage to homes and property, as well as with downed trees and powerlines, all of which come from Sunday's storm.
On Tuesday, crews from the National Weather Service who were out in Fayette County surveying storm damage determined that at least one more EF-1 tornado touched down on Sunday near Uniontown.
This brings the number in our region to now five confirmed tornadoes across three counties.
Meteorologist Matt Brudy from the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh says that the destruction that we are not seeing is not just from the tornados, but from winds that at times, were exceeding 100 mph.
"We had a really dynamic storm system that impacted the area on Sunday," Brudy said. "We had a lot of sheer instability, and those are the ingredients you need to develop severe thunderstorms. And everything kind of lined up perfectly for us with some clearing in the morning and a very volatile environment, that when you get that to overlap well, you can get several tornados out of one system and that's so far what we've seen from this one."
The sounds of generators supplying power to still blacked-out homes could be heard echoing throughout the area on Tuesday, as linemen and women from as far away as Massachusetts worked to restore power to people.
There was also a chorus of chainsaws that could be heard, cutting through hundred-year-old trees that were ripped up, root and stem by the storm.
That was Mike Walker's self-imposed task on this day, cutting up three pine trees that were first planted on his family's land back when his grandfather was a boy.
"You have to live with it you know," said Walker. "It's all you can do."
While the clean up in all three of these counties, Indiana, Westmoreland, and Fayette is underway, there is no word yet on the price tag for all this damage and what it is ultimately going to cost to not only clean up but rebuild.
