Pocono News Section

Tornado Also Touches Down in Wyoming County

Tornado Also Touches Down in Wyoming County - Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 11:40PM EST

Reported by: Eric Deabill
Thursday, Jul 30, 2009 @ 11:40pm EST
EATON TOWNSHIP, WYOMING COUNTY- Officials from the National Weather Service confirm that an EF-0 tornado touched down in part of Eaton Township early Wednesday afternoon.

That tornado started at the Jurista Farm and ended at the vacant Sire Power Plant building. That's about a path of a mile.

An EF-0 tornado can pack winds between 65 and 75 MPH. At the Jurista Farm it flattened a barn, it blew a shed off its foundation and literally split it in half. The twister also took down several trees.

Also in Eaton Township there was a lot of damage on Jenks Road. Dozens upon dozens of trees were toppled.

Leo Russavage along with friends spent the day with chainsaws trying to clear off his truck and make some semblance of a backyard. With dozens of trees down he expects the clean-up work will take him well into August.

The National Weather Service says the damage here is not a tornado but was caused by straight line thunderstorm winds that actually were more powerful than the tornado, at about 80-85 MPH.

The people who now have to clean up the damage say they're just glad no one was hurt. A lot of the damage caused curious onlookers to take a drive to this part of Wyoming County.

This is the first tornado to hit Wyoming County since the deadly Lake Carey tornado more than 10 years ago.