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Powerful Storm Tears up Trees, Downs Wires in State Park in Union County

HARTLEY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A long row of trees was flattened along Route 192 in the R. B. Winter State Park near Mifflinburg after a powerful storm with heav...

HARTLEY TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- A long row of trees was flattened along Route 192 in the R. B. Winter State Park near Mifflinburg after a powerful storm with heavy winds and rain blew through.

For those camping inside the park, it was a tense time waiting it out.

“I said to my husband, 'I'm getting my shoes on and coming over here,'” said Faye Aurand from Middleburg, pointing to the bathroom hut. “He said, 'Not now, we're in the middle of it,' so we just rode it out. It was very scary.”

“It was extremely, extremely windy,” said Paul Platt from New Columbia. “I was looking at my awning and thinking will I have an awning at the end of this?”

PennDOT had Route 192 shut down for hours so crews could clear away fallen trees and downed wires.

Geri Earl and her husband were coming into the park right at that time.

“Then within about an hour, maybe two hours, they had cleaned up and just took all of the wood and set it aside and we drove through this very narrow path,” said Earl.

The park manager tells Newswatch 16 the storm came in around 4 p.m. and when it was gone, dozens of uprooted or broken trees were left behind in its wake.

No one in the park was injured.

During the storm, a tree fell on a fire ring just feet from a camper owned by Jinny Gruver and her husband from Muncy.

“We were lucky, very lucky,” said Gruver.

“There's about 10 campers up there. They just missed campers,” said Aurand. “We were lucky right here where we are. Two of them went that way. If they had come this way, they would have been on our camper."

Crews on scene thought the damage was caused by straight-line winds, but weather officials will have to determine what type of storm it was.

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