The violent series of storms that swept across the State College area Monday night packed an even bigger punch than was first thought.
Experts at the National Weather Service confirm that a tornado touched down in a sparsely populated area near Colyer Lake.
AccuWeather Meteorolgist Brian Edwards, who was watching events unfold on radar, says at one point the storm that spawned the tornado passed ominously close to Boalsburg, just a couple of miles to the south.
“It came relatively close to Boalsburg on radar and touched down a couple of miles east of Boalsburg,” says Edwards. “You could see the storm was rotating so it could drop a funnel at any time.”
The NWS says the tornado swept across Church Road in Potter Township and traveled northeast, hitting the ground “sporadically” along a mile long path.
Clara and Ralph Rimmey heard it coming.
“It was scary. It was scary,” recalls Clara Rimmey, laughing nervously. “We heard banging. I guess it was hail hitting the windows. It was just pouring down rain and then the wind came.”
The Rimmeys have raised beef on their farm for the past 57 years and they’ve never seen a storm like this one.
That goes double for the Rimmey’s son and daughter-in-law. Doug and Belinda Rimmey live just up the hill.
It was just very loud,” says Doug Rimmey, who was watching the lightning show from his deck — not realizing what was about to happen. “All at once this rush, or roar if you will, along the north side of the mountains back here, you could see everything getting white or gray.
“It was coming and coming and I thought ‘Wow, that’s neat!’ … When I saw the trees at the edge of the woods bending like this (using his hands to show the trees were bending over at almost a right angle) I said ‘Look out. Here I come!’”
“Things were starting to blow around so I said let’s get to the basement,” Doug Rimmey says excitedly. “There was a lot of noise outside, very loud.”
Look below to see the video Belinda Rimmey shot through a screen door as the funnel cloud approached her family’s farm on Dogtown Road.
Once the tornado passed the Rimmey’s assessed the damage. “There’s about a 40 square foot of roof that came off of the barn,” says Ralph Rimmey.
It also blew a large sliding door off the barn. A glass picnic table was thrown across Ralph and Carla’s deck, shattering the glass top. A basketball backboard was torn off the garage. One of those heavy wooden swing sets got caught in the wind and was pushed about 15 feet.
The damage was minimal. Thankfully it was not a very big twister and more importantly, it wasn’t especially powerful.
“It was a fairly low rated tornado, explains Edwards. “It was on the ground for about a mile with maximum winds of 65 miles per hour. … The maximum width was about 40 yards which gives you and idea of how large the tornado was.”
Edwards says meteorologists weren’t surprised to hear that a tornado touched down, especially since a Tornado Watch was in effect at the time.
You might expect to see tornadoes in the Midwest, but fortunately they’re relatively rare here.
A couple of twisters have been reported in Boalsburg over the past 25 years.
One touched down on February 16, 1990. More recently, a tornado was reported on June 27, 2013. Those tornadoes were also fairly weak and did not cause any serious damage.
“It’s certainly not a normal event for this area — to have a tornado touch down in Centre County,” says Edwards. “Since 1975, over the past 40 years, this will make 12 tornado touchdowns in the county officially.”
