Environment

National Weather Service confirms EF-2 tornado in Wyoming County

WXXI News | By Randy Gorbman

Published July 28, 2022 at 4:27 PM EDT

A tornado that touched down in southern Wyoming County on 7/28/22 caused heavy damage to a barn and also damaged some other buildings, trees and powerlines.

A tornado touched down in southern Wyoming County on Thursday morning and it caused some damage.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jon Hitchcock said that just after 10:30 a.m., an EF-2 tornado, with maximum wind speeds of 115 miles an hour, cut about a 10 mile swath through Southern Wyoming County.

“It began in the southeast part of the town of Java and then moved to near Gainesville, over a path of about 10 miles,” said Hitchock. (It) did quite a bit of tree and powerline damage along that path, also did significant damage to a barn including moving a portion of that barn 20 to 30 yards off the foundation and also did significant roof damage to several other buildings.”

There were no reports of any injuries. Hitchock said that tornadoes in Western New York are not all that unusual, but they are usually weaker than the one that touched down Thursday in Wyoming County.

“An EF-2 is fairly rare for Western New York,” said Hitchock. “Most of the tornadoes that we get are the weaker variety, EF-0 and EF-1. We do average a couple tornadoes per year in Western New York. That’s not incredibly rare to see a tornado, but EF-2 is less common for sure.”