National Weather Service surveys damage in Fayette County, says straight-line winds most likely the cause
The National Weather Service was out again Wednesday surveying damage from Sunday's storms.
Five EF-1 tornadoes have so far been confirmed.
The NWS could be seen near Smithfield, Fayette County on Wednesday where they told KDKA they believe straight-line winds caused the damage done.
"So far, what we see along the path is mainly concentrated areas of tree damage, a couple of them with a good number of trees fallen, most of them in the same direction, which suggests to us that straight-line wind damage in most cases," Chris Leonardi said, NWS-Pittsburgh.
About 8 miles south, he said they also surveyed a remote area of Greene County in Dillner.
"There is one small area in far eastern Greene County that merits further investigation. But if that is a tornado, it would have been a very short track and fairly weak, but we still have to go back, look at radar data, and do some further analysis before we make that conclusion," Leonardi said.
Leonardi said the severe storms and tornadoes we see every day can be volatile.
"We typically will see, you know, several storm systems might have better tornado potential than others right now, there's no clear pattern. It's just sometimes it can be very volatile from year to year to the number of tornados that we get," Leonardi said. "Of course, back in 2021, we had a very busy year. We had relatively quiet years in 2022 and '23 and again, a very busy year, of course, last year in 2024. It's very difficult to pin it to any kind of long-term increase. A lot of it depends on small-scale features that are very hard to predict well in advance."
The NWS reminds us that we're still young in the season and stresses to be prepared.
"We always ask people to follow the weather and be prepared. Have a plan when a tornado watch or tornado warning is issued, make sure you know where to go in your house. Make sure you know what to do if you're outside of your house. As always, get a sturdy building on the lowest floor, if possible. If there's a basement available, get into that. Take all warnings seriously. That's why we put them out," Leonardi said.
As cleanup continues, the NWS reminds us not to burn right now.
"There's a lot of sticks and twigs that were down. We saw widespread 50 to 60 some even 70 mile per hour winds knocking all these tree branches down. Those sticks and twigs, you might be inclined to put them in a pile and start burning, but we do have elevated fire weather concerns today and into the rest of the afternoon, so make sure to take any precautions to not burn that yet, until we get into a colder, wetter period," Colton Milcarek said, NWS-Pittsburgh.
