The National Weather Service has confirmed a tornado touched down in the Douglassville area of Amity Township during Tuesday afternoon’s that ripped through much of Berks County.
An EF0 tornado, the weakest category used to rate tornado intensity based on wind speed and damage, touched down at 4:47 p.m. on Weavertown Road, according to from the NWS regional office in Mount Holly, N.J. Peak winds registered 70 mph.
EFO tornadoes have estimated wind speeds ranging from 65 to 85 mph. While considered weak, EF0 tornadoes can still cause damage such as broken tree branches, damaged roof shingles or overturned lightweight objects.
A NWS survey team was dispatched to the area Wednesday to investigate reports of a tornado.
The team gave the following assessment:
“Several trees had large limbs broken or snapped off, some of which were twisted, although these were all softwood trees. At least one tree was uprooted. Sporadic tree damage continued down Weavertown Lane with the tornado crossing Old Swede Road.
“The direction of the damage had some variability to it. The tornado may have partially lifted for a time, however the visible damage ended across a farm field at Boyertown Pike near Camp Road where several trees were downed. Given that the damage was confined to softwood trees, this tornado was rated on the lower end of the EF0 range with peak winds to 70 mph.”
To the east and northeast of the tornado path, a rear-flank downdraft with straight-line winds up to 70 mph continued toward Boyertown with additional tree damage, then to the north side of Gilbertsville in western Montgomery County, where more tree damage occurred.
Straight-line winds are spawned from downdrafts — intense columns of air that shoot from thunderstorm clouds, smack the ground and spread sideways in gusts.
“There were several other areas of wind damage in Berks County, and the probable cause of this was severe straight-line winds,” the NWS statement said.
More than 20,000 Met-Ed customers in Berks were without power along with about 1,000 PPL customers in western Berks immediately after the storm dropped inches of rain in an hour or so, and packed powerful winds knocking down trees.
As of 11 p.m. Wednesday, service was restored to nearly 98% of Met-Ed customers impacted by the storm and the remainder, approximately 400 customers, were expected to be restored Thursday before midnight, FirstEnergy spokesman Todd L. Meyers said.
Met-Ed deployed 160 additional line workers, including personnel from other FirstEnergy utilities and contractors.
The largest remaining outage was in the Greenfields neighborhood of Bern Township, where a large tree came down and broke a pole in the area of North Tulpehocken Road, Meyers said.
Additionally, off-right-of-way trees damaged several other nearby poles, breaking cross arms and bringing down wires and transformers in hard-to-reach spots.
“Restoring electric service to our customers is our top priority and crews are making good progress,” Meyers said Thursday afternoon.
