A sizable oak tree fell on Karen Nelson’s Whitehall Drive home, all but demolishing her bedroom, as a result of the punishing winds that blew through town on Friday, March 13. (Submitted photo)
Winds rip through village
- Published: March 27, 2026
An unlucky day for quite a few Ohioans — on Friday, the 13th, a dramatic windstorm knocked out power for more than 100,000 folks throughout the state, according to the National Weather Service.
The day’s highest wind speed, recorded by the Wilmington, Ohio, NWS forecast office, occurred not far from Yellow Springs, at the Dayton International Airport, where a gust of 77 miles per hour was recorded.
Yellow Springs was far from immune to the weekend’s impressive wind speeds. Between Friday and Monday, several neighborhoods temporarily lost power; fallen trees caused considerable residential and municipal damage; and downtown, awnings on several storefronts were torn asunder.
A memo from Electric and Water Distribution Superintendent Ben Sparks — delivered via Assistant Village Manager Elyse Giardullo at the Monday, March 16, Village Council meeting — addressed the Village response to the power outages, which began at 1 p.m. Friday.
“Our crews worked continuously until approximately 11 p.m. restoring service,” Sparks wrote, noting the difficult conditions still occurring when crews went to address the downed lines, almost exclusively caused by fallen branches, Sparks’ memo stated.
“Additional work continued through the weekend,” Sparks added. “On Saturday, our crew returned to complete a repair project that required running entirely new wire in order to restore service to one remaining customer. Then, on Sunday, another outage occurred when tree branches fell onto a line that caused multiple customers to lose power. Crews again responded and restored service.”
On Monday, as winds continued to flare, similar issues occurred, and Village crews again worked to restore service, Sparks reported.
Though several neighborhood pockets in the south end of town lost power more than once over the last week, the northern reaches of town saw the greatest physical damage from the wind — particularly the Fair Acres neighborhood.
Whitehall Drive resident Karen Nelson had a close call. The day’s high winds knocked over a massive oak tree on her property — its branches rending the roof, rafters and joists at one end of her house.
“It was cataclysmic,” Nelson said earlier this week. “I was standing in my bedroom, there was a loud noise, and the ceiling blew apart. I froze in place. Then it was quiet. I got a minor bump in the head and walked out without a scratch.”
Though the state of her home on Whitehall is a different story, Nelson said she is able to continue to live there, as she can close the door on the damaged rooms.
She added that friends, neighbors and local handymen arrived to the scene quickly, and Nelson said she’s grateful that no one was harmed with the oak fell.
“I feel like I’ve walked away from a plane crash,” she said.
On the south side of town, village resident Katleen Tong had a 100-year-old tree fall on her and her roommate’s cars on Friday, March 13.
While Nelson said her insurance will likely take care of her tree-related woes, Tong started a GoFundMe page to help her plight, stating: “My homeowner’s insurance is refusing to pay anything for the tree removal. … I am responsible for paying a tree company to remove the tree, cut it up and haul it away. As an inner city teacher, I live paycheck to paycheck and simply do not have that kind of money.”
To help Tong, go to http://www.bit.ly/3NcOu6e
Even a Village public works vehicle sustained damage from the weekend’s storms.
As Assistant Village Manager Elyse Giardullo recounted at the Monday, March 16, Village Council meeting, while Village crews addressed a fallen tree-related situation along the bike path, a tree fell on a public works truck — partially crushing the truck’s bed.
“The most important thing to note is that no one was hurt,” Giardullo said at Monday’s meeting. “We’re filing an insurance claim, and while I thought it was a total loss, [Village Manager] Johnnie Burns doesn’t think so.”
Despite all this damage from the windstorms, Superintendent Sparks maintains that the consequences could have been a lot worse.
“One important takeaway from this event is that the aggressive approach we have taken in maintaining and improving our electric infrastructure is proving to be effective,” Sparks wrote. “We had zero broken poles. In comparison to some of our neighboring communities, we were able to restore the majority of our electric service within six hours of the storm’s highest winds.”
The Village encourages residents to download and use the YSConnect mobile app — not only for emergency situation updates, but also to report power outages and other crises. The YSConnect app can be downloaded via any mobile device’s application store. For further instructions, go to http://www.yellowsprings.gov
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