Powerful tornado tears through Fayette County
Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park damaged
A powerful tornado ripped through portions of Fayette County early Friday, causing damage at a popular campsite and injuring some people in the area.
The National Weather Service in Moon confirmed that an EF2 tornado, with winds of at least 110 mph, tore through Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park campsite just outside Ohiopyle State Park.
Images showed a wide swath of destruction with downed trees, damaged vehicles and torn up tents.
Jellystone will be closed through at least the weekend, park spokesman Brad Ritter said Friday. The Fayette County Emergency Management Agency said a few people had to be taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries.
Guests with weekend reservations at the can rebook or receive a full refund, Mr. Ritter said.
“I was just awoken by a sound and the first thing I noticed was the flashing lights, it was like a strobe light out the window,” nearby resident Christy Miner told Post- Gazette news partner KDKA-TV. “And then I heard this sound that sounded like a freight train outside the house and I ran to the window foolishly and looked outside and I could see the trees bending clear over and the rain and the flashing, strobing lights — it was like something I’ve never seen before.”
The county emergency management agency said crews were dispatched to the scene, but downed trees and wires slowed them down.
Surveyors said the tornado’s path covered about 2 miles at a maximum width of 300 yards. The National Weather Service said a combination of several hundred mature softwood and hardwood trees were snapped or uprooted across the campsite. Many landed on vehicles, cabins and shelters, and number structures around the park were also damaged.
The weather service said it knew of three people who were injured by fallen trees.
The storm also knocked down trees along the Great Allegheny Passage between Ohiopyle and Meyersdale, a distance of about 40 miles. Trail officials said hundreds of trees were down inside Ohiopyle State Park, and park staff has temporarily closed the trail between mile markers 81 and 86 — between Ohiopyle and Connellsville. There is no detour around the area, officials said.
Crews also inspected damage around South Park. Surveyors determined it was caused by dangerously fast wind gusts, but not a tornado.
Surveyors said a concentrated area of Baldwin saw a few snapped tree trunks and damaged a roof and garage. Other signs of damage suggested winds peaked at about 90 mph, according to the weather service.
A line of storms picked up intensity late Thursday as they swooped in from the Great Lakes. In the hours leading up to that, slowmoving storms parked over much of the region, spurring severe-weather warnings and flood advisories.
Numerous locations in Allegheny County’s northern and eastern suburbs saw at least 2 inches of rain, including Aspinwall and Plum, the weather service said. Penn Hills recorded one of the region’s highest totals, with 2½ inches.
Tens of thousands of people around the region lost power in the early-morning hours, and many remained without power Friday evening. West Penn Power was reporting more than 9,000 outages in Fayette County as of about 5 p.m. More than 2,600 West Penn customers in Washington County and nearly 1,900 in Allegheny County were also still without power.
Duquesne Light said as many as 16,000 customers in Allegheny and Beaver counties were without power at the peak of the outages. As of about 5 p.m. Friday, fewer than 1,000 of its customers still were without power.
The weather service said it was the first EF2 or stronger tornado to hit Fayette County since June 1998.outbreak that saw at least 14 tornadoes around the Pittsburgh region