Palermo, NY – National Weather Service investigators will decide shortly whether to send an investigator to determine whether the damaging storm that hit Palermo last night was a tornado. The decision will be made shortly after 8 a.m., when the weather service Buffalo office’s day shift reports for duty, forecaster Jon Hitchcock said. Someone likely will go if there are...
Palermo, NY – National Weather Service investigators will decide shortly whether to send an investigator to determine whether the damaging storm that hit Palermo last night was a tornado.
The decision will be made shortly after 8 a.m., when the weather service Buffalo office’s day shift reports for duty, forecaster Jon Hitchcock said. Someone likely will go if there are enough staff members available for the shift, he said.
“Palermo definitely sounds interesting based on the funnel cloud reports and based on the way it looked on radar, as well,” Hitchcock said.
Oswego County 911 received eight reports last night from people who thought they saw a funnel cloud. Weather service radar picked up an echo indicative of a tornado about 8:25 p.m., but Margaret and Bruce Meldrim, owners of a 120-acre farm on Jackson Road, said they spotted a funnel cloud on their property about 25 minutes before then. The storm damaged three of their barns.
Minor damage also was reported in the Jefferson County town of Limerick, but no reports of funnel clouds have arrived, leading meteorologists to believe that straight-line winds were the cause, Hitchcock said.
The weather service’s Binghamton office, meanwhile, will send an investigator to Tompkins County to follow up on reports of a funnel cloud spotted there, said Dan Padavona, a forecaster in that office. No damage reports have come in to accompany that sighting, he said.
The Binghamton office also has received reports of 1 ½-inch hail falling in Rome about 10 p.m. and roofs being damaged and large trees falling on Route 69 about three miles northwest of that Oneida County city, Padavona said. His office will speak with Oneida County emergency management officials to discuss the extent of damage before deciding whether to investigate further, he said.
While most of the severe weather came last night, the state police reported that residents and police in the village of Herkimer saw a funnel cloud about 3:36 p.m. Monday. That storm downed large trees and power lines and damaged homes and one resident reported needing to hold onto a pole to keep from being blown away, troopers said.