MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Va. – A tornado left a small path of destruction for some in the New River Valley.
The storms were caused by remnants of Hurricane Ida.
The National Weather Service was in Montgomery County Wednesday evaluating the damage.
“Trying to find out if there was damage was caused by a severe thunderstorm or tornado and that’s really going to help build the climatology and help us understand the climatology for weather conditions in southwest Virginia, and this also helps the local community as well,” Warning Coordination Meteorologist Phil Hysell said.
Wednesday night there were several reports of funnel clouds near Blacksburg.
A Virginia Tech graduate student caught some of it on video.
TOTNADO ON THE GRIYND RIGHT NOW pic.twitter.com/J3FBnjPBie
— Justin Buchinsky (@JBuchinskyWX) August 31, 2021
“Just to get the word out to the public, and hope, you know, maybe if people just see the warning, they think, oh it’s just a warning, it’s you know it’s not real maybe with the video to have some kind of tangible thing to look at,” Virginia Tech Student Kayleigh Addington said.
Farmers in Montgomery County like Tim Simpkins were home when the storms started.
“We were watching the news and we seen the house that the farm that the farm that we read here, we’ve seen the storm cloud come over the farm and then we knew we should get over here and check on things and this is what we found,” Tim Simpkins said.
Simpkins spent the afternoon assessing the damage as several large trees on his property were pulled down in the storm.
“Bring a track loader in here later on and push a lot of it out we’ll fence it back we just do the best you can right now,” Simpkins said.
The NWS says storms like this are a good opportunity and a reminder to always have a safety plan.
“You can get tornados any time of year it’s not just spring and early summer so make sure you have that plan in place year-round,” Hysell said.
The NWS plans on releasing its findings of the storm once they’re done collecting information.
Homeowners we spoke with say it could take days or even weeks to fix the damage left behind by Ida.