Widespread damage and power outages were reported throughout the county this weekend following a severe storm and confirmed tornado in Hamblen Township.
Strong storms hit the county the afternoon of May 21 — downing powerlines, twisting trees and damaging homes. A thunderstorm watch was in effect, but Brown County Emergency Management Agency Director Susan Armstrong said the severe strong storm appeared to have “popped up,” surprising emergency and weather officials.
“It just kind of showed up. When I was talking to National Weather Service on Saturday (May 21) they mentioned that all of a sudden it was a huge, heavy wind event that popped down on us,” she said.
A brief EF-0 tornado was confirmed in a wooded part of Hamblen Township around 3:40 p.m. that lasted around two minutes, but damage was contained to the woods as it did not touch down near any residential homes. The parameters for an EF-0 tornado are 65 to 85 mph, according to the NWS.
“It was in a wooded area and it didn’t ravel very far. It really popped down and popped back up,” Armstrong said.
The first report of a tree down came into the Brown County Sheriff’s Department on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. on Upper Schooner Road. Over the course of eight hours, 47 more reports of trees down throughout the county came into sheriff’s department dispatch with the last report coming in at 11:30 p.m. that evening.
There were also 19 reports of powerlines down throughout the county. Armstrong said at the highest point of the outage 10,000 customers between Duke Energy and South Central REMC were without power.
“It was everywhere, way down to the southern part to the (Cordry-Sweetwater) lakes. It was widespread,” she said.
“The NWS said the nature of trees coming down was because the ground was so saturated and everything was so wet.”
Armstrong continued that the NWS had estimated parts of the county experienced 80 to 90 mph winds for two to three minutes straight.
“Even though it wasn’t a tornado that strong of winds for that length of time is what caused a lot of the damage,” Armstrong said.
The next day, on May 22, between 1,500 to 2,000 residents were still without power. As of 10 a.m. on May 23, less than 200 residents were still without power, according to Duke Energy and SCI-REMC outage maps.
Armstrong said houses in the Cordry-Sweetwater area had sustained damage from trees falling on them due to the 80 to 90 mph straight line winds. Anyone whose property received damage in the storm should email [email protected] their address, any photos and a description of the damage.
“Kind of let me know what they had and what kind of damage it was. Was it from wind? A tree falling on their home? We’re not seeing a lot of damage in any of the counties. It doesn’t look like it will be something big enough to get any kind of (emergency) financial assistance. It is always good to get that kind of information though,” Armstrong said.
“In Brown County we’re not going to have a large enough amount of damage, but what they do sometimes is if Johnson County sustained enough to qualify (for government assistance) they will pull in surrounding counties. But right now it doesn’t look like even that is a possibility.”
An EF-0 tornado was also confirmed in Johnson County on May 21. An EF-1 tornado was confirmed in Shelby County, Armstrong said.
This is the second EF-0 tornado to be confirmed in Brown County in less than three years. In June 2019, NWS confirmed that a small EF-0 tornado touched down in Brown County. In 2008, an EF-2 tornado was confirmed in Hamblen Township — a day before the large flood of 2008.
“It is not a normal occurrence. Most of what we get with wind events like this end up of being straight line winds because of our terrain,” Armstrong said of the frequency of tornadoes touching down here.
Hamblen Township Volunteer Fire Chief Arlan Pierce said the tornado that touched down in 2008 was a double vortex that came across Beech Tree Road then traveled near Green and Gold Point roads.
“One (tornado) was on the north side and one was on the south side. It tore up (Camp) Attebury and Edinburgh,” Pierce said of the 2008 tornado.
“We opened roads up on Friday and Saturday morning woke up to floods.”
This time around, Pierce said he and his crew were at the fire station, putting equipment up after responding to a crash to help with an extraction when the storm hit on Saturday. He said his crews barely shut the doors to the fire department when the sky turned black and the storm hit.
“The rain and wind were blowing so hard. We heard it for 30 to 45 seconds,” Pierce said.
“We had 24 to 30 inch trees that were just twisted on Persimmon Ridge (Road).”
In Nineveh, Cordry-Sweetwater Volunteer Fire Chief Mike Leavitt said the north end of the Lakes area received most of the storm damage.
Leavitt said his first thought was that there was a straight line winds, but when responding to fallen trees they found some that were completely twisted around, which is more in line with tornado damage.
Cordry-Sweetwater Volunteer Fire was busy until about 10 p.m. on Saturday night and then again until 8 p.m. on Sunday night, Leavitt said. They tried to get all roads clear on Sunday and had about one road that was still completely blocked as of Monday morning.
SCI-REMC was out cutting where neutral lines were tangled in the trees on Monday, Leavitt said.
Chief deputy at Cordry-Sweetwater Conservancy District, Jimmy Green, kept a list of how many homes were affected in this weekend’s storm, which were about three or four, Leavitt said.
The homes had trees either fall on or through them, but fortunately no one was injured as the homes were being constructed or remodeled with no one living there, Leavitt said.
On Monday, May 23 Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner said that Three Notch and Smith roads were still closed in Hamblen Township due to trees in power lines that were blocking the roads.
“We have cleaned up as much as possible until the electric lines have been repaired,” he said.
The highway department crews were out from 3:45 p.m. on Saturday to late in the afternoon Sunday, clearing trees from the roads that did not have power lines involved.
Magner said as soon as electric wires are cleared by power companies he was going to have his crew out finishing the storm clean up on May 23.
