Severe storms moved through parts of Carbon County Wednesday night, turning a routine evening into a cleanup day for residents in East Carbon and Sunnyside. The weather brought quarter-sized hail, heavy rain, strong winds and flooding, and by Thursday people were outside assessing damaged property, knocked-out power and water that had rushed through places that are usually dry.
Jessica Olsen said East Carbon took a pounding from hail, lightning and thunder, and she said the storm tore out screens. That kind of damage showed up across the area as communities in Huntington, Wellington, East Carbon and Sunnyside dealt with the same fast-moving weather on the same night.
Barbara Montgomery said the storm in Sunnyside was unlike anything she had experienced before. She said the hail was so heavy she had never seen anything like it, and the flooding came with a power outage on top of it. By Thursday, she was still looking at the ground around her home and saw part of her yard beginning to slope after the storm.
What made the night dangerous was not just the hail. Residents said a gully near several homes overflowed and damaged nearby infrastructure, while a creek that is usually dry filled with water and spilled into surrounding streets. In one case, Xander Nelson described the hail as a nonstop percussion and said a tree came barreling down the creek after he heard a crash. He also said water leaked through skylights and hail made it inside his home.
The storm left residents with a simple but unsettling lesson: places that look harmless in dry weather can turn quickly when heavy rain hits. While people spent Thursday cleaning up, they were also preparing in case more severe weather moves through Carbon County again.
