National Weather Service may send team to confirm damage to barns is from a tornado
A sheet of metal roofing hangs in a tree in front of the Meldrim Meadow Farm on Jackson Road in Palermo. No one was hurt, but three barns were heavily damaged by a wind storm that may have been a tornado that struck the farm Monday evening.Their 19 head of Scottish Highland cattle survived as well, they said, however three barns were badly damaged.
Margaret Meldrim saw the storm roaring toward their farm from her kitchen window right around 8 p.m. as they were finishing up dinner. She saw the funnel cloud and hit the floor. Her husband said they needed to get to the basement.
From a window in the basement they could see trees and roofing tossed by the wind. "You could just see stuff flying everywhere through the air," she said standing in her driveway while National Grid crews worked to restore power around her. In the darkness to her left, a large tree lay on top of a damaged pickup truck.
One barn, the one built in 1860, appeared undamaged. Bruce Meldrim worked in the old barn under electric lights powered by a generator.
A twisted piece of aluminum hung in a tree in front of the house. It had been part of the two-year-old hay barn hours earlier.
Margaret Meldrim said the storm damage, and all the work it has created, means she won't be able to show their prize-winning cattle in this weekend's Oswego County fair. Fixing roofs and rebuilding barns has to come first, she said.
The Meldrims have owned the farm for seven years, raising grass-fed Scottish Highland cattle because when the two visited Scotland for their 25th wedding anniversary, they knew that's what they wanted to do. Scottish Highland cattle, say Margaret Meldrim, "is the only beef the queen will eat."
The Meldrims sell their own beef and count on the fair for marketing, Margaret Meldrim said.
But, she said, rebuilding comes first and the first priority has to be to get the fences back up so the 19 animals, including four "babies" born earlier this year, won't wander away from the 120-acre farm.
The National Weather Service in Buffalo reported that the Palermo farm is the only place where damage to a structure was reported. A cluster of storms struck Central New York as the weather service issued warnings Monday evening.
A crew from the weather service may come out Tuesday in an effort to confirm a tornado did in fact touch down.
Oswego County emergency dispatchers reported about a dozen calls from people who spotted a funnel cloud in Palermo Monday night around 8 p.m. Like the weather service, they said there were reports of trees down in the area but Meldrims' farm appears to be the only place where buildings were damaged.
Contact Charles McChesney at cmcchesney@syracuse.com.