Storm damage is being assessed after a confirmed tornado

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – The Emergency Management Agency (EMA) of Muskingum County and the National Weather Service have confirmed a tornado occurred during Tuesday’s storm.

The tornado came down near Shelly and Sands on both sides of the river on State Route 60 and Old River Road. The category of tornado will be determined after the extent of storm damage has been fully assessed.

“At least an EF-1, maybe higher,” said Jeff Jadwin, the director of the Muskingum County EMA. We’ll just determine that as the day goes on. Got a crew out, my deputy and a state rep. are out doing home damage assessments, so we’ll be collecting a lot of information. We also have to collect from the state, the county, the townships so that we know how much damage that we can get.”

Jadwin says that when he began assessing the storm’s impact this morning at 7 a.m., an estimated 1,400-1,500 power outages in the county. Jadwin wants to take time in the aftermath to remind people to stay aware of weather conditions to stay safe.

“I’ll remind, as I always do, everybody needs to sign up our reverse 911 so they get the notifications that severe weather is in the area, especially like the tornadoes,” Jadwin said. “They’ll get the alerts that they’re under a tornado warning so if you don’t want to do ours, sign up for WHIZ’s app or any of the Columbus apps, the National Weather Service app so that you can be made aware that there is bad weather approaching. ”

You can download the WHIZ Weather App through Google Play and the Apple App Store to get those weather alerts and as a way to keep up with your local weather in general.