The National Weather Service has confirmed that on July 27 a tornado with winds topping 100 miles per hour touched down in Potter County, cutting a swath through Homer and Summit townships measuring three miles long and 200 yards wide across.
Joe Ceru, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Bureau out of State College, said the tornado has been categorized as an EF-1, meaning wind gusts between 86 and 110 mph. The numbers on the Enhanced Fujita or EF scale range from an EF-0 to EF-5 and run the gamut from “gale force tornado” to “incredible tornado.” While an EF-1 level storm is considered a “weak tornado,” by EF standards, Ceru said they are not to be taken lightly.
“An EF-1 can still cause damage,” Ceru said. “It can knock down trees and cause structural damage.”
In the case of Coudersport, the storm felled trees by the hundred damaging two structures in the process.
The Coudersport tornado was one of two to touch down that day, the second landing in Troupsburg, N.Y.
“Both tornadoes came out of the same long-lived low-topped supercell storm,” he said.
In Potter County, the tornado first touched down on Big Moore’s Run Road in Homer Township, moving northward and doing intermittent damage along the way before veering east, where the last observed damage was located along First Fork Road in Austin.
On Sunday, First Fork Run Road resident Thomas J. Predmore was still cleaning up over a week after the storm he said toppled dozens of trees, some as tall as 100 feet and left him with an estimated $18,000 and $25,000 in damage.
While the storm spared his home, it leveled fences and littered the property with debris.
Predmore said he had just returned from State College on Saturday, July 27 when it started to rain.
He walked inside his home to find the family dog acting strangely and scared to go outside.
“When I stepped off the back, the lee side of the house, it was like 50 mile per hour winds with rain pelting me,” he said.
Predmore, retired U.S. Navy, said the experience reminded him of one from his days in the service.
“I’ve been in a monsoon and that’s what this was like.”
The winds felt by Predmore were strong enough to leave trees literally “twisted,” and bent towards the ground at angles of up to 30 degrees, he said.
While there were no injuries or power outages reported with the storm, Predmore said his reports of obstructed roadways and damaged utility pole garnered no response.
“We had to clear the road because PennDOT never came out,” he said.
As of Sunday, Predmore said his calls to PennDOT (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation) and Tri-Electric had yet to be returned.
“We called PennDOT Saturday and they never came. Nobody in either emergency department did anything,” he said.
Officials with PennDOT and Tri-Electric Rural Electric Cooperative could not be reached for comment on Sunday.
For her part, Summit Township secretary Sandy Penrose called the storm’s power “awesome,” in describing the extent of the damage.
“It hit Predmore, cut across there and twisted trees,” Penrose said. “There are yards covered in debris damage to roofs where it went across a log house and then another.”
In the middle of clearing an 80 foot Hemlock that the winds laid across his driveway, Predmore seems to have found a silver lining in all of this.
“At least Mother Nature gave us plenty of firewood,” he said.
