A powerful windstorm with gusts of more than 60 mph uprooted trees, toppled light standards, snapped utility poles and knocked out power for over 15,000 customers Tuesday afternoon in Berks County.
Unlike some storms that leave a defined well-defined path of destruction, Tuesday’s windstorm, which included a few brief showers without thunder and lightning, was selective in its damage.
On Wednesday morning, it was hard to tell in some neighborhoods that wind strong enough to uproot a full-grown tree occurred only 12 hours earlier. But you didn’t have to venture far in any direction to find examples of the destructive power of the gusts.
STEVEN HENSHAW – READING EAGLE
A tree service crew removes a tree Wednesday morning after it was topped by onto a vehicle in the 3100 block of Merritt Parkway in Spring Township during Tuesday’s windstorm. (STEVEN HENSHAW – READING EAGLE)
The National Weather Service, Mount Holly, N.J., issued a wind advisory Tuesday afternoon for portions of east central, northeast, and southeast Pennsylvania, as well as parts of Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, from 1 p.m. until 8 p.m.
The advisory warned of winds of 15 to 30 miles per hour, with gusts of up to 50 miles per hour.
According to National Weather Service data, those predictions were exceeded when the winds tore through Berks starting shortly before 4 p.m. The highest wind speed (average wind speed measured for a duration of 2 minutes or more) was measured at 47 mph, and the highest wind gust (a sudden increase in windspeed) was 62 mph.
You probably felt that gust.
STEVEN HENSHAW – READING EAGLE
A toppled light standard along Village Drive in Spring Ridge on Wednesday testified to the power of the windstorm that passed through Berks County a day earlier. (STEVEN HENSHAW – READING EAGLE)
Several light stands were toppled along Village Drive in Spring Ridge.
In Reading, a utility pole snapped along the 1600 block of South 16th Street and knocked out power for nearly 1,600 residents throughout the eastern section of the city in the afternoon. Nearly 13,000 Met-Ed customers in Berks were without service initially.A torrent of calls to the Berks County 911 center poured in for downed utility poles and wires and trees toppled onto roads, vehicles and buildings.
“We are now handling hundreds of calls of a fairly minor (but important) nature,” the Berks Department of Emergency Services said late Tuesday afternoon in a Facebook post. “Fire resources are very busy throughout the county, with some jurisdictions having dozens of calls pending the availability of field resources to handle them.”
About 2,700 PPL Electric Utilities customers in southwestern Berks County were without power Tuesday afternoon, with 954 outages in Wyomissing, 627 in Spring Township, 540 in South Heidelberg Township, and 500 in Cumru Township.
Outage figures declined throughout the night as crews made repairs and/or rerouted power.
By 11 a.m. Wednesday, PPL was reporting just under 400 Berks customers out of service, mostly in South Heidelberg Township. Met-Ed reported a little more than 5,600 customers without electricity, scattered across much of the county.