Also shares his favorite weather apps
Residents will likely remember for years the Friday the 13th storm that charged through Jefferson on McKinley St last week. They’ll likely continue to talk about whether it was a tornado. Greene County emergency management director Dennis Morlan, is certain it wasn’t.
Morlan told GreeneCountyNewsOnline Tuesday evening that he had two lengthy conversations with National Weather Service meteorologists. They spent hours looking at all the weather data they had and confirmed what they said Saturday – that there was no rotation, no tornado.
According to the NWS and Morlan, two storms collided over Jefferson, one coming from the north-northeast, and the other coming from the south-southwest. They collided, and the north storm “backed in” to Jefferson in what the NWS described as “an extremely unusual” event.
The storm “came from no where,” Morlan said. He had been monitoring two different weather sources and nothing like the storm was predicted.
He explained why the storm sirens sounded after the storm had passed. He said they’re more correctly called “high wind event sirens,” not “tornado sirens.” They’re meant to be sounded when there are winds of 70 mph or more, or if there’s a chance of a tornado. “No one saw it coming. I’m glad that (incident commander) Jack (Williams) sounded the siren. There was no way of knowing what might come next. That siren was sounded to make people aware of dangerous weather and to keep them safe,” Morlan said.
Jefferson city crews were called out Friday night to place barricades and they started cleaning up debris on Saturday.
On Monday, they were joined by about 10 volunteers from Scranton Manufacturing. “Scranton Manufacturing is a good corporate citizen of Greene County. They knew we needed help and they came,” he said.
A crew from the company returned Tuesday. “They certainly deserve a nice pat on the back,” Morlan said.
Morlan is staying with his first damage estimate of $2 million, with $1.5 million of that being property damage to buildings and structures. There wasn’t enough damage for a disaster declaration that would make low-interest loans available to homeowners for repair. There may be enough cost to the city to qualify for a very low interest loan, should the city need it.
Even though the Friday the 13th storm was not predicted, Morlan still advises residents to have a weather radio and a weather app on their smartphone. His wife, “Mrs. M” as he affectionately calls here, is a “whiz” at programming weather radios, and he volunteered her to help anyone who takes a weather radio to the Greene County Emergency Medical Services office on Grimmell Road just north of Greene County Medical Center.
He recommends and uses Storm Hunter WX, a weather app developed by former KCCI-TV meteorologist John McLaughlin, and the NOAA Weather free app.
