Severe Weather Strikes Pennsylvania

Thursday August 9^th, 2007 started out with a bang when I was awoken at 7am with bright lightning strikes outside my window and loud bangs of thunder coming from above. The thought of the severity of the storm didn't dawn on me as I unplugged the computers and turned off the air conditioning. My cats scattered into the basement as I went back to bed thinking "this storm will be over soon." Oh, how I was wrong.

The first storm moved through the area flooding Millvale, PA as well as areas of Sharpsburg, Wilkins Township and Penn Hills. The storm consisted of high winds, pounding rains, streets flooding, lightning, thunder...the whole works... Then around noon came the second round of storms, but this time, it was worse. At 2pm a tornado was spotted in the heart of Downtown Pittsburgh and Allegheny County was issued with a Tornado Warning.

Living not more than 8 miles from Downtown Pittsburgh, I was looking towards the skies, awaiting the Tornado. Fortunately I was not affected, however the Carnegie Science Center sustained broken windows and paneling off the side of the building was ripped off of the west side of the center. The tornado was clocked moving east at around 30 miles per hour. Many of the people visiting the Carnegie Science Center stated that they had seen the funnel cloud moving up the Ohio River.

After that round of storms was complete, another round came through; pounding the area again with heavy rains, but this time there was no tornado.

Normally, three times is the charm, but not in this case. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl officially declared the City of Pittsburgh in a state of a disaster emergency. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were flooded along with 35,000 homes and businesses without electricity. It has been two days after the storm and about 4,000 of those homes are still without power.

The town of Millvale, just outside of Pittsburgh, got hit the worst. The same town that had been badly damaged due to a creek overflow in 2004 from Hurricane Ivan. The Millvale flooding started with the first batch of storms and continued throughout the evening. Almost more than 3.5 inches of rain fell onto Pittsburgh.

Millvale has been trying for years to get something done about Girdy's Run Creek that is rising and assisting with the flooding, however this time the mayor reports he is going to do whatever is necessary to make sure this doesn't happen again. The Army Corps of Engineers said Friday it would begin dredging the creek and repairing the flood wall next week.

Not only should we think about assisting the problems, such as creeks rising when it rains, I think we should also look into what is making these storms so violent, and could it be global warming? Especially one that creates a tornado in a city that never sees one.

In conclusion, many lives were lost, many lives were saved, many homes untouched, and many homes destroyed. We all have to pitch in for the changing of the weather to be gentler on our society, and in order to do that we have to depend on ourselves if the state or county will not help.

Good luck to all of those who had suffered from this past week's storms and God Bless.