YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — Sunday marked the 22nd anniversary of the Veterans Day weekend tornado outbreak, which had long-standing impacts on the Valley.
Overall, the storm system produced 93 tornadoes stretching from Mississippi to Pennsylvania. There were 22 confirmed tornadoes in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The most impactful storm to the Valley was a tornado that occurred on the evening of November 10 in the community of Clark, Pennsylvania. Chief Meteorologist Paul Wetzl remembers it well.
“We were really concerned about the storm, not only as it moved from Mahoning County up into Trumbull, but especially as it got into Mercer County as it produced the tornado that hit Clark,” he said.
The devastating tornado that hit Clark was an F2 tornado with a width of 500 yards and a length of 7 miles. The tornado had maximum wind gusts of 155 mph, which would make it an EF3 on the enhanced Fujita scale that is used to rate tornadoes today.
Wetzl saw the aftermath firsthand when he helped the National Weather Service survey the damage of the tornado. What he experienced continues to have an impact on him today.
“This outbreak always sticks in the back of my mind even as we go into severe weather coverage now. There was a young man, and he said, ‘Me and my mother were watching you [on TV during the storm], and you said get to the basement, and we left.’ While he was telling me that, I was staring at the basement steps where the whole house had crushed in on top. I think about that even to this point. That is how important our words are,” he recalled.
Overall, the Veterans Day weekend tornado outbreak of 2002 resulted in 36 fatalities and 303 injuries and is considered to be one of the most impactful November tornado outbreaks in recorded history.
