The National Weather Service ended a tornado watch for Southwestern Pennsylvania shortly after 7 p.m.
No tornadoes were reported. At times, the affected counties included Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Beaver, Fayette, Indiana, Washington, Westmoreland and nearly all of Western Pennsylvania. A small portion of northern West Virginia remains under an alert.
The NWS issued a tornado watch shortly after 1 p.m. and updated the area of concern throughout the day. Pennsylvania counties started to be removed from the tornado watch by early evening.
A tornado watch alerts the public to the possibility of a tornado forming in the next several hours. This latest alert came on the heels of five confirmed tornadoes hitting the region earlier this week and multiple others in the past several months.
The NWS also issued alerts for severe thunderstorm warnings and high winds throughout the day. Greensburg, Latrobe, Mount Pleasant and surrounding communities were briefly placed under a severe thunderstorm warning.
Roland “Bud” Mertz, director of public safety for Westmoreland County, told TribLive just before 4 p.m. that calls for downed trees and power lines have remained relatively low in most areas.
“Right now, aside from the cluster in Monessen, it really hasn’t been what we call a high call volume,” Mertz said.
Around 1,500 West Penn Power customers in Monessen, Greensburg and Hempfield who had lost electricity earlier in the day have since had their power restored, according to the company’s outage tracker.
