MERCER COUNTY, Ky. — The National Weather Service visited Mercer County today to survey reported damage from the Memorial Day Weekend storms. Fallen trees claimed the life of one 67-year-old woman and damaged other properties throughout the county.
Driving through Mercer County, downed trees and limbs littered yards, and even sat on top of a few houses, showcasing a wide line of destruction.
“You need to treat severe thunderstorm warnings just as importantly as tornado warnings,” said Brian Schoettmer, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service in Louisville.
Schoettmer made multiple stops at locations where damage had been reported, looking for signs of a potential tornado and taking measurements to estimate wind speeds.
“What we look for is convergent damage patterns,” Schoettmer said, discussing the signs of a potential tornado. “What you would have is you would have trees laying in lots of different directions.”
“If it was straight line winds, trees would kind of all be laying in the same general direction and even maybe kind of fan out a little bit, whereas with a tornado, your winds are circulating counterclockwise, so things lay in different directions and a lot of times more toward each other.”
Throughout the county and at each of our six stops, almost every downed tree and limb pointed in an easterly direction. Because of this, Schoettmer estimated that the cause of the damage came from straight-line winds reaching around 80 mph.
“I think it’s important to keep in mind that 60, 70 mph winds, they can knock trees over, and that’s something that can cause injuries,” Schoettmer said.
Mercer County usually sounds its sirens for severe thunderstorm warnings, something that Mercer County Emergency Management Director Brad Cox said has made some people frustrated.
“Sometimes a severe thunderstorm is just a heavy storm,” Cox said. “Sunday night proved that an 80-mph burst can come through and can cause a lot of damage.”
Storms like this one give Cox enough reason to show why severe thunderstorm warning sirens are just as important as tornado sirens.
“You’ve got to pay attention to that severe thunderstorm warning, just like you would a tornado warning because it’s gonna hit, and it’s gonna hit hard.”
