Winds whip through western New York

PEKIN, N.Y. (WIVB) - Wild weather whipped through western New York, overnight into Thursday. Around 3:30 a.m. a News 4 viewer tipped us off to a destructive scene in Niagara County.

In Pekin, in Niagara County, there was a large tree that uprooted and is on its side. Underneath the tree, which is hard to see, is the local pastor’s car.

All of the damage off of Upper Mountain Road is near St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church. Fortunately no one was hurt, but neighbors say around 3:30 a.m, it sounded like a freight train rolling through. Area residents were startled and frazzled, they didn’t know what was going on.

The high winds lasted about 15 seconds. When people looked outside, they saw Upper Mountain Road covered with branches.

Early Thursday morning, Pekin fire officials were on the scene and reopened Upper Mountain Road.

“It sounded like a railroad train from the distance, and the wind came through. The wind was so strong, it blew out numerous screens in our house, increasingly loud, my ears did pop. Then, it was a matter of the aftermath,” said an area resident.

“We had multiple trees down, all throughout Upper Mountain Road here. We had to break out the chain saws, some of the branches, cut them down,“ said Timothy Curcione, of the Pekin Fire Department.

The weather left thousands of people in the dark Thursday morning. You can find the latest outage information on WIVB.com