LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — As cleanup continues after Tuesday’s severe weather tore through Lexington, meteorologists with the National Weather Service spent the week assessing the damage.
“Anytime we have a storm or concentrated area of damage, we go out and see if there are any noticeable patterns so we can discern if it's straight line wind damage or a tornado that's come through,” said meteorologist Ryan Sharp.
Like detectives at the scene of a crime, NWS meteorologists follow the path of the storm with clues, noting where branches broke off of trees, how fallen trees landed on the ground, mud spattered on siding, and other indicators.
“The storm was moving to the east, southeast, so that could be a clue that there's a little bit of a crossflow around,” said Sharp, surveying parts of Melrose Avenue and Sunset Drive in the Chevy Chase neighborhood.
There, the storm forced massive, full-grown trees to topple onto homes and vehicles.
Pulling up an app on his phone, Sharp snapped photos of the damage and typed notes regarding the damage. The information gets sent back to the National Weather Service for data collecting purposes.
By the end of his assessment of Chevy Chase, Sharp determined that it wasn’t a tornado, but 90 - 100 mile per hour straight-line winds that tore through the neighborhood.
“If there's a widespread wind event like we just had, then we're hitting the hardest hit areas first, then going back and catching up. It takes days if not weeks,” said Sharp.
