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PHILIPPI – The National Weather Service has confirmed that a tornado touched down in Barbour County last week during the severe storms of July 21.
The NWS has issued preliminary assessments of five tornadoes that touched down in West Virginia during the storm, including one along Taylors Drain Road in Barbour County, which is five miles north of downtown Philippi.
“There was a tornado that we surveyed on last Tuesday (July 21) that trekked along Taylors Drain Road and then right along the Appalachian and Ohio Railroad,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Harrison Sincavage told The Inter-Mountain on Monday. “It lasted for about a minute, starting at 5:39 p.m., and we estimated peak winds of 85 miles per hour.” The tornado ranked as an EF0 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which assigns tornados ratings based on estimated wind speeds.
Sincavage said the Barbour tornado was right on the cusp of being an EF1 tornado, which has winds of 86 to 110 miles per hour.
“The width of the tornado was 110 yards, so basically the width of a football field,” Sincavage said. “It trekked for 1/3 of a mile along the railroad track before lifting approximately 1 minute later. Multiple hardwood trees were either uprooted or snapped along the track of the tornado. Some of the trees that were uprooted were in excess of 18 inches in diameter. There was some pretty substantial tree damage along that trek.”
Sincavage said that after last week’s tornado, Barbour County now has experienced a total of five, dating back to the late 1800s.
“The last tornado that occured on Barbour County was an EF1 just last month on June 22 and that one touched down just to the northeast of Moatsville. It was approximately 6 miles to the east/northeast of the one last week, so we had two in close proximity to each other in about five weeks,” he said.
Before the most recent tornadoes, the last one occurred in Barbour County in June 2016 near the community of Tacy. The last Barbour tornado before that was in 1974.
“Tornadoes in Barbour County are particularly very rare, with just five going back to the late 1800s,” Sincavage said. “We are talking about four tornadoes going back the past 75 years. Before the one in 1974 you have to go back to the 1950s. So they are very rare occurrences in Barbour County.”
Pleasants, Tyler, Ritchie and Doddridge were the other counties in the Mountain State that had tornadoes touch down on July 21.
The NWS is currently calling for potential thunderstorms that could bring downpours and high winds to the area again today.
“There could be some scattered showers and thunderstorms late Tuesday morning and into the afternoon,” Sincavage said. “It will be quick-hitting out of the Northwest and not everybody will see rain. But you can’t rule out a brief downpour with that activity and then maybe wind gusts between 30 and 40 miles per hour. It will be nothing like last week, just typically summertime storms.”