Tornado in western Pa. destroys 30 homes

Published 1:51 pm Thursday, March 24, 2011

GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) — The National Weather Service has confirmed that a tornado was responsible for destroying 30 homes and badly damaging about 60 more in western Pennsylvania.

Meteorologists have been surveying damage in Hempfield Township in Westmoreland County, about 25 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Schools there were closed for a second day because of heavy damage from Wednesday afternoon’s storms.

The storms were part of a far-reaching system that stretched from Nebraska to upstate New York on Wednesday.

In North Carolina, The Hendersonville Times-News reports a Polk County man was killed when a tree fell on his pickup truck. Experts in Tennessee are doing surveys in three areas to see if storms there were tornadoes.