Dentsville, MD – The National Weather Service can’t confirm anything considered tornadic activity in Southern Maryland during the storms that rolled through Monday, Aug. 21 following the solar eclipse, but they can confirm that there was wind damage around Dentsville in Charles County.
“We haven’t heard of anything significant to my knowledge,” Dan Hofmann, meteorologist for the National Weather Service stated. “We don’t have anything clear cut about something tornadic. There was definitely extensive straight-line winds in that area.”
Hofmann did acknowledge that a tornado warning was issued around 5:13 p.m. for Bushwood, Clements, Compton, Morganza, Chaptico, Mount Victoria, Tintop Hill (Country Lakes in , Wicomico, Maddox and Loveville. At one point residents near Allen’s Fresh and Bowling Road thought a twister had come through but those reports were unconfirmed.
The storms were just the latest in a series of gully washers which have pummeled Southern Maryland throughout the summer. Hofmann admitted that the region is several inches above normal for 2017.
“It’s kind of strange because we were actually in a dry pattern for June and most of the spring,” he said.
June, he said, was actually way under average with just over an inch of rain recorded for the entire month.
“We came out of that in a big way,” Hofmann said.
The month isn’t over yet, and already the month of August has produced 3-and-a half inches over the normal of 9 inches. And hurricane season is just getting started. As of this writing, there are two systems in the mid-Atlantic weather watchers have their eyes on, one which will impact the gulf coast, another expected to skirt Florida’s coast and head on an uncertain track up the east coast.
One homeowner one Penns Hill Road stood in her driveway Tuesday morning and looked at the damage wrought when a maple tree crashed against her house. Most of the damage looked confined to her house’s gutter, but she said she had to go stay with her daughter in Upper Marlboro.
“We didn’t have any power,” she noted. “I just didn’t expect it. That tree has been there as long as we’ve been in the house and we never even lost a limb off of it before.”
Another house just up the road from hers had more damage as a tree crashed across the roof.
“That’s my nephew’s house,” she said.
Hofmann said that if folks think it’s been a wet year, they’re right.
“The rainfall this year has definitely been above normal,” he said. “I don’t want to say it’s in the top ten, but it’s definitely in the top 25 percent.”
Depending on what happens in the months to come, and if it continues to rain like it has, he admitted, the Top 10 might be a possibility before 2017 is over.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com
