Employee photo / R. Michael Semple Paul Straley from Mecca stands in front of his tornado-damaged house on 2369 Griffith Drive on Friday evening.
CORTLAND – Paul Straley and son Easton were working out at a gym on Thursday when they received a shocking call from his wife, Jennifer. A tornado hit your house.
When they arrived at 2369 Griffith Drive, the Straleys rated the damage caused by the tornado, which the National Weather Service later identified as EF-1, which had a sustained wind of 104 mph.
The door of the attached garage was knocked off, the roof and exterior paneling damaged and a tree fell on the deck.
“We found our dog hidden in the cellar” said Paul Straley. “The garage has suffered the greatest damage.”
Straley’s house appeared to have had the most damage in the neighborhood, but trees fell on the vehicles and on the lawns of others in the area.
“We expect our insurance expert (today) to come here.” he said.
Kera Hall and her son Donald, 7, were at their home at 5908 State Route 46 decorating his pumpkin and on the phone with their mother when their mother asked if everything was okay.
Hall, who hadn’t been watching the weather, looked outside and saw the sun still shining.
A few moments later, when she looked outside for the third time, the wind had picked up significantly and it was difficult for her to close her screen door.
“We don’t have a basement, so we ran to the bathtub and got in.” said Halle. “I could hear the wind above us.”
A few seconds later the power went out.
The rest of the night they sat in the dark.
“The tornado apparently went over my house” She said. “God has watched over us.”
Several neighbors came by on Friday to check on them.
“A neighbor and his son came by to clean up my garden and stayed all day.” She said. “Our neighbors have come together to help one another.”
According to the National Weather Service in Cleveland, two tornadoes hit Trumbull County’s Thursday afternoon with peak winds between 80 and 104 miles per hour.
The EF1 landed near Mecca east of Mosquito Lake at 6.15 p.m., according to Zachary Sefcovic of the National Weather Service in Cleveland. It rose from the ground at around 6:18 p.m.
The tornado hit several apartment buildings on Griffith and Edgewater driveways and caused major damage to an attached garage.
It traveled 0.6 miles and had a maximum width of 50 yards.
“Several trees were kinked and uprooted on the way” said Sefcovic. “It broke up east of Phillips Rice Road.”
A brief EF-0 tornado landed on Porter Drive, south of State Route 88 in Johnston, causing tree damage throughout the area in the last minute before it took off at 6:21 p.m.
EF-0 tornadoes have average winds of 65 to 85 miles per hour.
It traveled about 0.07 miles and was about 20 feet wide. It had sustained winds of 80 miles an hour.
Six tornadoes landed in northern Ohio on Thursday. The strongest landed at 5:10 p.m. in Jackson Township in Stark County. It had sustained winds of 110 miles per hour.
It first landed near North Park in Jackson and damaged trees, recreational buildings, and a large garage. As it traveled east, it damaged a store along Wales Avenue NW. It traveled 2.9 miles and was 50 yards wide.
To the west, a roof was torn off a house in Wickliffe, where an EF1 tornado, with winds estimated at 97 miles per hour, landed for about a minute around 4:50 p.m., according to NWS Cleveland.
Radar data in Pennsylvania showed three twisters near Mount Nebo and Hampton in Allegheny Counties and Buffalo Township in Washington Counties Thursday night, forecasters said.
Polls in the Pittsburgh district on Friday confirmed EF1 tornadoes in Jefferson County and Warnock, each at speeds of around 90 and 95 mph, respectively, according to posts on the National Weather Service Pittsburgh Facebook page.
The Pittsburgh forecast area has an average of three confirmed tornadoes per year, but more than 25 were confirmed in 2021, of which about 10 happened in October, including five on October 16.
No injuries have been reported since Thursday evening.
From 1950 to 2020, October 11 tornadoes were confirmed in the Pittsburgh forecast area, according to the National Weather Service.
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