Published: June 17, 2008 08:55 pm      

Weather officials: Wind, hail, rain amount to severe thunderstorm

ROCK — Mercer County and other parts of the region experienced a severe thunderstorm Monday evening, but none of it qualified as a tornado.

The National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Va., issued a tornado warning Monday for parts of Mercer County and sections of Giles and Bland counties in Virginia. Doppler radar indicated that a possible tornado was heading for the Matoaka and Montcalm areas.

Later that same evening Mercer County 911 received reports that a tornado may have touched down in the Rock River Road area. No injuries were reported, but a fallen tree had damaged a house. No determination was made then about whether a tornado had actually arrived.

On Tuesday morning a storm survey team from Blacksburg, Va., arrived in the Rock area to survey the scene. Warning Coordination Meteorologist Phil Hysell and meteorologist Peter Corrigan inspected the damage and took photographs, but they determined that the area had not been hit by a tornado.

“We found very limited damage,” Corrigan said soon after returning to the weather center. “Essentially one large tree fell on a house. A lot of debris was from hail. Obviously a large amount of hail fell last night, and mostly leaves were down. The hail was about the size of nickels or quarters, fairly large. For the weather service a penny size or larger is considered a severe thunderstorm.”

One resident who lives between Rock and Lashmeet said the hail storm was extremely heavy.

“The lawn was covered with ice,” said Evelene Horne, 73, of Wright Mountain. “At times you couldn’t see. It was really bad. The wind was furious. It was blowing so hard that at one point the hail was going in a horizontal line.”

Hail literally “chewed up leaves” on the roadway and damaged tomato plants in Horne’s garden, but otherwise there was no serious damage.

“It was interesting, but we have a lot to be thankful for,” she said.

The tornado warning was issued when radar indicated conditions that could produce one, Corrigan said. The storm was showing rotation, but to have that rotation actually reach the ground is difficult depending on atmospheric conditions.

There had been the possibility that the damage was caused by a small tornado. Tornado strength is classified on the Enhanced Fujita scale on a range of 0 to 5 with five being the most powerful. A class EF 0 tornado has winds from 65 to 85 mph, similar to a severe thunderstorm, Corrigan said. An EF 1 has winds of 86 to 110 mph.

A tornado on the EF 0 to EF 1 range was in Roanoke, Va., recently, he said. It damaged trees by “skipping around their tops”, but no major damage to buildings was reported.

According to weather service records, the last confirmed tornado in Mercer County was seen on April 12, 1965, Corrigan said. He did not have the exact location where it was sighted, but it was an EF 2 with 111 to 135 mph winds.

Tornados are rare in the region, but not impossible, he emphasized.

“Some people think mountains can defend them, but mountains are not a complete defense against tornados,” Corrigan said.