Fierce Saturday storm uproots trees, causes power outages
A fierce thunderstorm ripped through the Butler County area on Saturday afternoon, leading to power outages and downed trees.
One area that was hard hit was the Country Club Heights neighborhood in Penn Township, located near Butler Country Club. At least one resident, Tim O’Brien, reported that the neighborhood sustained heavy physical damage and power outages.
“There were several pine trees in our neighborhood that went down,” O’Brien said. “Probably about 20 or so pine trees that went down and that was just one area. And we had 100-mph winds come through.”
O’Brien added that no one in the neighborhood was injured, and that no homes, to his knowledge, were substantially damaged.
According to township Supervisor Henry McNutt, Clearfield Township also experienced some downed trees on township roads. However, that damage was cleared by Monday afternoon.
“There were a number of trees that were down,” McNutt said. “(My road crew) had a chipper out there and they had to call a number of tree companies to get things cleaned up. Probably 95 to 98% of it is done and cleaned up. There was nobody injured and there was no report of any damage to houses.”
Peak numbers of Butler County residents who lost power were unavailable. However, according to West Penn Power spokesperson Todd Meyers, 22 customers were still without power by 8 a.m. on Sunday, but had power restored later that day.
The county’s other power company, Central Electric Cooperative, reported no outages in Butler County as of 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon.
