Eighty Four hardest hit in Sunday storm, tornado warning issued in Greene County
Work was underway Monday to clean up after flooding at the Springhouse in North Strabane Township.
A sign advises customers the Springhouse was closed Monday because of flooding.
Washington and Greene counties fared better than their neighbors during a batch of Sunday evening storms, save one community.
“Washington County didn’t do too bad,” National Weather Service meteorologist John Darnley said. “No large wind damage … basically just heavy rain and flooding contained over the Eighty Four area.”
A “stationary storm” that hit the North Strabane Township community dumped almost two-and-a-half inches of rain in about three hours.
Popular eatery Springhouse Country Market and Restaurant fell victim to the rain. Store manager Marcia Minor Opp said customers kept purchasing as water rushed in the back door and out the front.
“The customers wanted to keep coming,” Opp said with a laugh. “I said, ‘You have to go,’ and they’d say, ‘But I have to get my pies.'”
The restaurant closed early Sunday and remained closed Monday as family and restoration crews worked to restore order.
“In 40 years, we’ve only ever closed for four holidays. It’s really odd for us not to have our staff here,” Opp said. “Hopefully, we’ll be back in business shortly.”
Darnley said elevated temperatures during the day plus high humidity created heavy rains, winds and lightning.
A spokesman for West Penn Power said about 4,000 Washington County customers lost electricity from the storm.
Todd Meyers said crews worked all night to restore power, with all but about 50 customers restored by Monday afternoon.
The western half of Greene County was spared the worst of the storm despite the weather service issuing a tornado warning in the Aleppo area shortly after 7 p.m. Sunday.
Darnley said they were investigating whether a tornado touched down in the West Virginia panhandle just west of Greene County. He said they received reports of trees down blocking Fork Ridge Road at U.S. Route 250 north of Cameron, W.Va., along with two trees down near Route 891 a mile west of the Pennsylvania state line.
“It’s a good image showing pretty good winds,” Darnley said of the radar. “But we’re not getting any ‘ground truth’ and we can’t verify it without that.”
By Monday afternoon, however, the weather service in Pittsburgh announced investigators at the scene found no evidence the storm actually spawned a tornado.
Greene County Emergency Services Director Greg Leathers said it appears there was little wind damage from the storm and he reported no serious flooding in the county.
“That storm dissolved when it was still in West Virginia,” Leathers said of the tornado warning. “We were lucky. We got nothing.”