County escapes second round of tornado threats

Published 3:00 am Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Pike County escaped a second threat of tornadoes Monday morning just days after another tornado touched down and caused damage in an area between Troy and Banks.

Jeanna Barnes, EMA director, said the rotation picked up on radar threatened the “same general area” that was damaged Thursday, but no tornados reportedly touched down.

“We have a few trees and limbs down, but we didn’t have any damage like we had Thursday,” Barnes said.

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Much like during Thursday’s storm, Pike County was only considered as a marginal threat to have severe weather and had did not go under a tornado watch before the tor-nado warning began.

Barnes said there was nothing special about the two storm systems that led to the tornado threats forming in the Pike County area.

“It’s just spring severe weather season and any storm could become severe,” Barnes said.

More weather is being predicted for the county later this week, currently being forecasted for sometime between Wednesday and Thursday. Barnes said the National Weather Service has set the risk for severe weather as less than even marginal, but said residents should still remain aware as storms can always develop.

Barnes said her team is working on getting their mass notification system ready to push for sign-ups so that local residents have more options to get alerts.

There is no official date for when the system will be up and ready for public use, but Barnes said she wants to get it out this month as soon as possible.