August 18, 2005

A shagbark hickory tree fell onto Nita Murphy’s Phillips Street home during the storm that hit Yellow Springs last Thursday. The tree went through the home’s roof and pierced a hole in a bedroom ceiling.

‘Nasty storm’ hits Yellow Springs, downs trees, cuts power

By Diane Chiddister

A little before 6:30 last Thursday evening, the rains came. And they came. The sky darkened, the wind whipped, hailstones the size of ping-pong balls punished windows and roofs, and all over town trees swayed, bent and, in many cases, finally crashed.

Robin Gerhardt, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Wilmington, called Thursday night’s weather event “a pretty nasty storm.”

Yellow Springers, who took the brunt of the wind and rain in Greene County, didn’t need to be told that the storm was a big one.

When it ended, around 7 p.m., trees had fallen all over town, some bringing down power lines, others blocking sidewalks and streets. Villagers, looking stunned, began wandering the streets, assessing the damage and cleaning up.

But what had happened? The bad weather was classified as a thunderstorm by the National Weather Service, with winds up to 70 miles an hour. The Weather Service received reports of ping-pong-ball- and half-dollar-sized hail, Gerhardt said, but no report of a tornado.

Villager Greg Schauer, a weather watcher for Channel 2 News in Dayton, said that the storm came up suddenly, with no official watches or warnings. It seemed to begin in the Huber Heights area, then traveled southeast through Fairborn and Yellow Springs, he said.

It proved significantly more powerful than a “run-of-the-mill pop-up storm” often caused by heat and humidity, Schauer said, noting that he observed horizontal rain and thought the hailstones would “break the windows” of his home on Dayton Street.

“I’m in a quandary” about the cause of the storm, he said.

Schauer said that tornado warnings had been issued earlier that afternoon in some parts of Indiana, and Yellow Springer Stacy Arnett, who was traveling on Dayton-Yellow Springs Road toward I-675, said that he observed swirling dark clouds converge into a funnel cloud that hovered in the air but never dropped to the ground.

According to Schauer, a retired Wright-Patterson Air Force Base weather watcher reported a storm “super cell,” or rotation within a cloud, in central Greene County.

It was noisy even after the storm ended, as the wail of fire trucks cracked the air.

“Trucks were flying all over town,” said Miami Township Fire Chief Colin Altman.

The fire department received 14 calls in a period of an hour and a half, from about 6:30 to about 8:10 p.m., he said. Most of the calls related to downed power lines, and one motorist reported being stuck in a car in a puddle in which a utility line had submerged. However, the line turned out to be cable and the motorist exited the car.

Amazingly, said Altman, there were no reports of injuries.

Fire trucks responded to smoke in the Wright State Family Health Center on Xenia Avenue, where the storm fried computers, Altman said. The fire department and the Village electric crew also responded to a burning utility pole on Omar Circle. Michael Applin, the head of the electric crew, said that the pole likely took a “direct shot of lightning.”

The fire department also put up orange cones and yellow tape around fallen trees to keep gawkers at bay, Altman said.

According to Derek Willis, the co-owner of Arbor Care, about 40 trees around town came down in the storm, including ash, maple, walnut, and locust. While some were older trees, many were perfectly healthy, he said.

At a Lamont Drive residence, a 35-foot pine tree was pulled out of the ground by its roots and four ash trees crashed, including two that fell on top of cars in Amy Crawford’s driveway. She said that one car was destroyed and the other damaged.

Four large maples were downed on the grounds of Mills Lawn School, one turning a jungle gym into a pretzel-shaped toy. On the Antioch College campus, six large walnut and sugar maples fell, according to Mike Miller, director of the physical plant, who said the college was lucky that the trees caused no building damage.

But some Yellow Springers weren’t so lucky, and trees damaged about five or six homes, according to Willis.

On Whiteman Street, a towering maple tree crashed, smashing all but one wall of a garage on the property owned by the First Presbyterian Church and inhabited by its minister, Angie Schenck, and her family. On Phillips Street, a shagbark hickory fell through the roof of the home of Nita Murphy, whose bedroom ceiling had a gaping hole through which poked a three-foot long branch. Murphy was out of town, according to her housesitter, Mark Siemer, who said that he and several others worked to cover the roof damage with plastic until the tree was removed. On Tower Court, part of an ash tree crashed into the roof of the home of News editor Robert Mihalek and Amy Holbrook.

At 7 p.m. work was just beginning for the Village electric and street crews, which worked through the night until about 5 a.m., then returned to work the next day. Between 300 and 375 homes lost power during the storm, and all power had been restored by 7 p.m. Friday, Applin said. Applin and Kelley Fox, foreman of the electric crew, also worked five hours on Saturday.

On Thursday night, the streets crew began in the worst hit area, on Xenia Avenue between Herman and Marshall Streets, where traffic was held up. They then moved to West South College and Xenia Avenue to clear the road, along with Glen Street, which was also blocked. It took about two and a half hours to clear the streets on Thursday night, said Harold “Dunie” Hamilton, the Village road crew supervisor.

In addition to Applin, Fox and Hamilton, Village workers involved were electric crew members Dan Mayenschein and Jane King, and street crew members Dave Conley, Kent Harding and Joel Crandall.

“It was strictly a team effort on both departments’ part,” Hamilton said.

The Village crews were aided by local tree trimmers, including Timmy Edwards and Arbor Care, and on Friday had help from Triac Electric, which helped the Village restore power. The Miami Township road superintendent, John Finn, also helped out, as did members of the police and fire departments.

According to Hamilton, several community members also aided the cleanup effort, including Ross Morgan, Adrienne Chesire and Mark Alexander.

Willis of Arbor Care, who also worked through the night on Thursday, then returned to work Friday and Saturday, said that the storm was one of the worst in recent memory. He recalled another storm that required several days of cleanup about five or six years ago.

“About every five or six years we get a good one,” he said.