Theresa Burd was at the gas station on Warren Sharon Road in Brookfield mid-afternoon Thursday when the sky turned “a weird, greenish color,” sudden high winds blew a wooden sign across the road and rain pelted down.
“It was weird,” the Brookfield woman said.
When she got to her home on Valley View Drive, her chimney cap had blown from the house to the street, and the severed top 15 feet of a neighbor’s evergreen tree had flown about 30 feet into her yard.
Across the street from Burd’s house, to the east, a maple tree uprooted, falling on the front of the home of Eric and Donna Miller.
“They’ve got some structural damage, but they’ve got people coming out to fix it,” Brookfield Fire Chief David Masirovits said of the Millers, who are department members. “She said there was no hazards, but they did have structural damage.”
One street to the west of Burd, on Lynita Drive, Nancy and Jacc Lees had watched the storm from their home.
“Scariest thing I ever saw,” Nancy Lees said. “It (wind) was going in every direction. My husband said, ‘Look, it’s going up.’ It was awful.”
promoShingles were blown off a couple of their neighbors’ roofs, and tree debris was scattered everywhere.
“I heard a boom and everything was going sideways,” Jacc Lees said.
“We’re in our 70s,” Mrs. Lees said. “Never seen anything like that in my life.”
West of the Valley View development, on Merwin Chase Road, trees came down on two sections of road, blocking traffic.
“If you follow Merwin Chase and you follow that straight across and go right into Valley View, it’s a straight line wind, or a microburst, something like that,” Masirovits said. “I am going to contact the National Weather Service and report the damage.”
Burd reported seeing a funnel cloud.
On the West Hill, a tree branch came down, blocking one lane of North Stateline Road at Curtis Street, and another blocked the road and was wrapped in wires near Lincoln Street. A Sharon resident across the street showed where a flying tree branch had cracked her windshield. A fallen tree knocked a power line down on Cleveland Street by Nicholas Street. The traffic light at Warren Sharon Road, Yankee Run Road and Brookfield Avenue was without power. At 8:20 p.m., Ohio Edison reported up to 140 customers on the West Hill were without power.
Elsewhere in the township, tree limbs were severed along Warren Sharon Road from Brookfield Center to the east, a tree came down on Route 7 in the center, and a small power outage was reported in the area of Everett East Road.
Masirovits said he heard there was some storm damage in Burghill and Kinsman, but nothing like what Brookfield sustained.
“We had the brunt of it,” he said.

Shawn Davis, a supervisor with the Trumbull County Engineer, clears a tree from Merwin Chase Road.

Shawn Davis, a supervisor with the Trumbull County Engineer, clears a tree from Merwin Chase Road.

Lynita Drive

Lynita Drive

The home of Eric and Donna Miller, Valley View Drive.

The home of Eric and Donna Miller, Valley View Drive.

North Stateline Road at Curtis Street.

North Stateline Road at Curtis Street.

North Stateline Road near Lincoln Street.

North Stateline Road near Lincoln Street.