STATE COLLEGE – Our Valley was just hit with two tornadoes, and while it is rare this time of year, AccuWeather Meteorologist Heather Zehr says it is not unheard of. WKOK, in an exclusive interview with the Senior, Expert, Meteorologist, asked her about the twisters, “Basically, we feel this was just due to an unusually vigorous system. We do sometimes get tornadoes at unusual times of the year, and sometimes, even more than one.”
Zehr says not only was the storm unusual from a weather standpoint, but also because the terrain in Pennsylvania usually keeps tornadoes to a minimum. Zehr says this may not be the end of the rough storms heading into the summer, she says this severe weather season has already proven to be more active than previous years.
“These last couple of years have been unusually quiet, especially in terms of tornadoes all across the country. Even in tornado alley, it has been unusually quiet and we’ve had a lack of the usual number of tornadoes. This year is off to a more typical start in that part of the country. It is a little unusual here that we got into the action as early as we did,” she said.
Zehr says this storm demonstrates Valley residents should heed ‘watches’ and ‘warnings,’ even if they come in the middle of the night, “You can have a phone, alerts set up, where you can get alerts either from the National Weather Service or through a third-party app like Accuweather.com, that will send you those alerts, and hopefully that’ll wake you up, even in the night.”
Four tornadoes hit Union, Columbia, Sullivan, and Warren Counties. Those included two EF-2 tornadoes, and two EF-1 tornadoes.
