OHIO Storms cause light damage

A weak tornado touched down 40 miles south of Columbus.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
An unexpected round of storms cropped up in parts of Ohio on Monday evening and into Tuesday, prompting tornado warnings and interrupting the Cincinnati Bengals preseason game.
Toledo saw light street flooding and a few structures in central Ohio took wind damage, but no injuries were reported.
A team from the National Weather Service in Wilmington confirmed Tuesday that a weak tornado touched down Monday evening near Kingston in Pickaway County, about 40 miles south of Columbus, said meteorologist Don Hughes. With winds between 40 mph and 72 mph, the tornado was an F0, the weakest on the scale meteorologists use to rate tornados' destructiveness, he said.
"First it downpoured rain for two minutes. It stopped and got real silent, then it sounded like someone was taking a sledgehammer and beating on tin," said Teresa Wills of Kingston.
"Then it sounded like a train engine."
Flattens crops
Wills and her husband sought shelter in their basement. The couple later discovered the storm had flattened the crops in a 200-foot wide stretch of their cornfield.
"All this stuff was swirling around in the air. I saw it spiraling down. It was at least 100 feet wide. It hadn't touched the ground but it was coming toward our house," said Amanda Seimer, also of Kingston. "At that point I was kind of scared and I didn't know what to do."
The high winds damaged a barn and a business, sheriff's dispatcher Todd Smith said.
The storm cleared the area by 7 p.m., Smith said.
The roofs of three buildings were damaged at Pickaway Machine and Fabrication, a steel fabrication plant. An insurance adjuster gave a preliminary estimate of about $250,000 in damage, said co-owner Brian Pontius.
The damage wasn't preventing work at the plant Tuesday morning, Pontius said.
"Our employees are here. They are limited in what they can do in some areas, but they are working," he said.
A second wave of storms swept across western parts of the state later Monday night, delaying the Bengals preseason game against the Green Bay Packers for nearly 40 minutes because of heavy rain and lightning.