A historic theater in Sandusky was heavily damaged, if not destroyed, by powerful winds and tens of thousands of Toledo Edison customers were left without power late Wednesday afternoon in northwest Ohio after strong thunderstorms punished the region with heavy rain and powerful wind gusts.
Hardest hit were Ottawa and Erie counties, which at the height of the storm had 14,289 and 11,826 customers respectively without electricity, while power failures affected 3,386 homes and businesses in Sandusky County and 398 in Huron County. Three hours later, more than 4,000 Ottawa County customers’ power had been restored, but the outage number from Erie County had actually risen slightly, while the blackout count in Sandusky County remained over 3,000.
Well over 1,000 customers in other northwest Ohio counties also remained without power after nightfall.
Dispatchers for the Erie County Sheriff’s Office and Sandusky police said they were too busy to discuss the damage. But photographs posted to Twitter showed major damage to the Sandusky State Theatre from the collapse of its roof and parts of its walls.
We have just obtained video of the State Theater in Sandusky falling. It was posted to Facebook by Doug Flinner. @NWSCLE pic.twitter.com/ZERdssZgFp
— Erie County SkyWarn (@ECSkyWarn) June 11, 2020
Erie County SkyWarn posted to Twitter shortly after the storm that a tornado might have caused the destruction, but later updated that straight-line winds seemed a more likely cause. Brian Mitchell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Cleveland, said that office had received no tornado reports nor issued any tornado warnings based on radar echoes, but straight-line winds from the storm were strong enough to cause damage.
Depending on the extent of storm damage elsewhere, Mr. Mitchell said, an assessment team could be sent to Sandusky on Thursday to examine the theater site.
No injuries were reported there, nor in neighboring Ottawa County.
“We’ve got a lot of poles down, a lot of trees down. We’re still assessing the damage,” said an Ottawa County sheriff’s dispatcher.
Earlier during the afternoon, Williams County was the first part of northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan hit by fast-moving storms that advanced into the area from Indiana at mid-afternoon. Toledo Edison said 721 customers still were in the dark there hours later, down from a peak of more than 2,000, while nearly all of about 800 customers in neighboring Defiance County had their lights back by then.
Sheriff’s dispatchers in Williams, Defiance, and several neighboring counties also said that beyond trees and wires down, they had no reports of injuries or more substantial storm damage.
The heavy weather was initially concentrated in the far northwest corner of Ohio and neighboring Michigan, but as the afternoon wore on, storms that had developed over southwest Ohio moved north past Lima and Findlay to target Bowling Green and eastern parts of metro Toledo.
FirstEnergy reported 449 customers without power in Lucas County, 324 in Wood County, 742 in Seneca County, and 342 in Fulton County after the storm moved through.
Small hail was reported in some areas during the storms, but there were no publicized reports of funnel clouds, much less tornadoes, in the Toledo area although forecasters had cautioned beforehand that tornadic activity was possible with the storm threat.
After storms had cleared out of metro Toledo, a distinct line of thunderstorms redeveloped to the east oriented almost due north-south. At 7 p.m., a jagged line of heavy precipitation stretched from Sandusky to Columbus and Portsmouth, Ohio, with storms within that line moving rapidly to the northeast as the line itself pushed east.
Downtown Toledo stayed dry, meanwhile, until an isolated heavy shower trailing the main activity reached the downtown area about 7:30.
A severe thunderstorm watch remained in effect in Toledo and counties to its immediate south and east until 10 p.m., but watch areas northwest of Toledo and in Ohio counties west of I-75 had been discontinued after the storms passed.
The volatile weather combined tropical moisture associated with the remnants of Tropical Storm Christobal with a strong frontal boundary separating hot, humid air to the east from cooler, drier air to the west. The hotter air mass produced a record high temperature of 97 degrees in Toledo on Tuesday, breaking a 95-degree mark from 1914.
First Published June 10, 2020, 5:09 p.m.
