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TROUBLESOME VALLEY -- Pendleton County saw two tornadoes touch down during the severe storms on July 21, officials said.
According to reports, during the July 21 storms, a EF1 tornado touched down at 7:25 p.m. on Kiser Gap Road in Franklin near Route 33. The tornado is said to have moved east/northeast through Troublesome Valley and into Fort Seybert. It then crossed the state line into Virginia before lifting in Criders, Virginia at 7:45 p.m., lasting only 20 minutes.
Joan Ashley, a resident of the Deer Run area near Fort Seybert, and a former Inter-Mountain reporter, said the tornado traveled right behind her house. She admitted that she did not know about the tornado until afterward when someone else told her it traveled that way. Ashley said that it missed their house and the barn on their property.
“It sort of hip-hopped,” Ashley told The Inter-Mountain. “It went behind our house, it tore up trees and did damage that way. Didn’t really hurt anybody. Nobody was hurt.”
Ashley noted that the tornado had torn up a residential trailer and she believed it took down a nearby barn. She also talked about an incident involving a couple and their child on Troublesome Valley Road.
Ashley said that, when the man had heard that a tornado was coming their way, he put their baby in the car and went to pick up his wife, who had been out jogging.
“On Troublesome Valley Road, he picked his wife up. She got in the car,” Ashley said. “A tree fell across the front of their car, taking out I guess the engine or the front of it, and a tree fell behind them, but it didn’t hurt them. So that was one of the little miracles here on Troublesome Valley Road.”
Ashley said that, as of Aug. 6, her internet was still out because of the storm.
In a Public Information Statement regarding confirmed tornadoes, the National Weather Service said the Troublesome Valley tornado had an estimated wind peak of 100 mph and traveled 10.5 miles in length and 150 yards in width. There were no reported injuries or fatalities, according to the NWS.
“In summary, thousands of trees were downed along this rural 10.5-mile path,” the NWS said in the statement. “In peak intensity areas, most of the trees in the path were uprooted or snapped. Structural damage was mainly from tree falls, although there was some wind damage to siding and outbuildings noted.”
The other tornado in Pendleton County, an EF0, touched down at 7:04 p.m. in Seneca Rocks, according to reports. Only lasting around two minutes, the tornado had an estimated wind peak of 80 mph. It traveled just 0.2 miles in length and 75 yards in width.
Damage from this tornado was limited almost entirely to trees with about 30 to 50% of trees damaged being on a property on Thunder Road. The NWS reports that the trees were “mostly uprooted in a convergent pattern.”
“The tornado tracked east-northeast,” the NWS said in the statement. “None of the farm buildings sustained significant damage, nor did the house on the property. The tornado crossed the road and tracked up a hillside across the street with continued tree damage before dissipating after about two minutes.”