WYSH: Storm damage follow-up; EF0 tornado confirmed in Kingston

 

Information from WYSH Radio

The National Weather Service has confirmed the powerful storms that rolled through the area on Tuesday included an embedded tornado in Kingston.

Officials with the NWS office in Morristown assessed the damage and said an EF-0 tornado touched down along 3rd Street in Kingston. The winds of an EF-0 tornado are around 65-85 miles per hour.

The NWS said the widespread damage throughout East Tennessee was almost entirely from straight-line winds and down-bursts. Kingston is the only site suspected of sustaining tornado damage.

The Weather Service says straight-line winds estimated at 80 mph packed a destructive punch in Clinton, which appeared to bear the brunt of the damage from Tuesday’s severe weather.

Tuesday’s storm swept through the historic downtown area of Clinton, ripping the old Hoskins Drug Store neon sign off the front of a building on Market Street. Restoring the sign could cost anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 based on previous quotes.

Catching up on some of the other damage reports from around town, we want to issue a correction. On Wednesday, we incorrectly identified the owners of the Pass Time Garage on Main Street which was destroyed by the storm with two people inside who suffered minor injuries. The business is actually owned by the Tilley family, including father Russ and son David.

Meanwhile, the roof at the Clinton High School football fieldhouse was damaged by the wind.

Clinton Utilities Board officials said their coverage area has not seen the widespread damage caused by this week’s storm since the blizzard of 1993. At the height of the outages, more than 6,100 people were without electricity, and some parts of the service area may not have power this weekend.

Meanwhile, according to our partners at Oak Ridge Today, roughly 4,000 customers lost power in the Tuesday evening storm, and about 70 damaged homes will require repairs by an electrician before power can be restored. Oak Ridge Electric Director Jack Suggs told ORT that he doesn’t recall ever having 70 homes damaged in one storm, although the Electric Department has experienced worse storms when many utility poles were broken.

But the brief, fierce Tuesday storm, which brought severe winds and driving rain, was significant in terms of its damage to homes and its far-reaching nature, from Blair Road on the west end of town to east Oak Ridge and beyond.

The effects of the Tuesday afternoon storm were still being felt on Wednesday as a large tree, weakened by the wind and rain from the previous day, toppled over in the back yard of a home on West Norris Road in Norris and destroyed its back porch. No one was hurt in that incident, and thankfully no serious injuries were reported in connection with the storm.

See previous stories here:

• Oak Ridge: 4,000 lose power, 70 homes damaged
• Storm damages buildings, knocks down trees, knocks out power
• Another 12 hours or so to restore power, Electric Department says

Information in this story brought to you through an agreement between Oak Ridge Today and WYSH. See more local news headlines on the WYSH website at http://www.wyshradio.com/local_news.html.