City Sorts Through Damage from Sept. 21 Super Cell

A severe storm with supercell characteristics struck Olney on Sept. 21 around 4:30 p.m., leaving a wide trail of destruction from Main Street southward and cutting power to parts of town for more than an hour. Officials are still awaiting word from the National Weather Service on whether the storm produced a tornado.

Jared Cook, Young County’s Emergency Management Coordinator, said the NWS will review the weather pattern to determine whether it matches tornadic activity. “We won’t know for sure until the NWS confirms, but the damage is significant,” Mr. Cook said.

Storm chaser and meteorologist Reed Timmer, who tracked the storm as it approached Olney, described it as a severe system with rotation that warranted concern. “There is the front edge of the supercell—the rotation should be right in front of us,” Mr. Timmer said on a Facebook video while driving into the storm about five miles north of town. He noted large hail, lightning, “big wind,” and what he called “major rain curtain action” as indicators of the storm’s volatility.

Olney Volunteer Fire Department Capt. Jason Pack documented widespread damage across town, describing the storm’s path as circular and unpredictable. “The majority of it was from basically Main Street and south of town,” Mr. Pack said. “At Highway 79 and Cottonwood Road, it put a carport on top of a house. By the time it got to Highway 114, it blew a pig barn across the highway.”

At Stewart’s Food Store, a building blew down in front of the store. Tower Fab lost part of its roof and had a door blow in, he said.

Mr. Pack said the town’s baseball complex also took a beating. “At the new baseball field, it flipped the bleachers upside down from south to north and tore the netting behind home plate. It also flipped bleachers on the T-ball field,” he said.

Downtown was not spared. “The old two-story hotel by the old police department had its roof ripped off, which landed on the police department and into the power lines,” Mr. Pack said. That strike loosened several lines and cut power to parts of town for about an hour and a half.

The storm hit while the Olney Volunteer Fire Department was already stretched thin on a mutual aid call with Graham, battling two lightning-caused fires—a large grass fire and a structure fire on Hall Road. “We had multiple trucks out and about through the storm,” Mr. Pack said.

Despite the widespread destruction, no injuries were reported.