NWS: Tornado weak, brief
A tornado Wednesday ripped off some of the siding from the CareerLink building at 570 Galiffa Drive in Donora.
Donora Mayor Don Pavelko points to the path a tornado took when it touched down Wednesday, sending his grill and privacy fence into his swimming pool.
DONORA – Donora is famous for giving birth to the clean-air movement and having once been home to two members of professional baseball’s Hall of Fame.
On Wednesday afternoon, it made history by becoming the first town in the mid-Mon Valley to experience a tornado in anyone’s memory, Donora Mayor Don Pavelko said.
“Surprisingly, no one was injured,” Pavelko said Thursday as borough residents were still cleaning up from the weak, brief tornado that touched down at 2:41 p.m.
“That was the silver lining under the black cloud that blew over this area,” said Pavelko, whose backyard swimming pool was damaged by the storm.
The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said winds of 80 to 85 mph were detected in Donora, which classified the event as an EFO tornado under the Enhanced Fujita Scale. An EF5 tornado carries wind speeds greater than 200 mph. At its peak, the tornado in Donora was 250 yards wide.
Weather service meteorologist Rodney Smith said it is rare for any one town to experience a tornado in Washington County, even though there is usually an event every four or five years in the county.
Despite the local belief that the Mon Valley’s steep hills protect it from tornadoes, the hills “really don’t matter” if the right conditions move through to create one of the events, Smith said.
Damage in Donora and its eastern neighbor, Webster in Westmoreland County, followed a path of about one mile in length, the weather service said. In Donora, most of the damage was discovered on First and Second streets between Waddell and Allen avenues.
Healthy and rotted hardwood trees were uprooted or snapped, and several houses sustained damage to siding and flashing and experienced the uplift or removal of shingles or industrial roofing panels, the weather service stated on its website.
Bricks blew off two chimneys in Donora, and several porch awnings were destroyed. A wall also was blown out of a brick garage.
Pavelko said the tornado also touched down in Donora Industrial Park, taking siding off of the CareerLink building.
The weather service said the tornado continued across the Monongahela River, damaging trees along its banks in Webster, between Webster Hollow and Turkey Hollow roads. The last debris was found on the Webster hillside.
Smith said an area might experience more property damage from a squall line of storms than what typically happens in a small, brief tornado like the one that visited Donora Wednesday.
The Donora Smog of October 1948, a weather event that was worsened by zinc mill pollution being trapped in the valley in Donora and Webster, killed more than 20 people over two days and spurred the nation’s first federal clean-air laws. Stan Musial and Ken Griffey Jr., both of whom were born in Donora, are in the Hall of Fame.