PERRY COUNTY -- Severe summer storms built up in the middle of the night and awakened Central Ohio with loud thunder and lightening-filled skies early Tuesday.
Storm Team 4 has team coverage from Perry County, which was the hardest-hit area.
Residents and law enforcement reported suspected tornado damage in the Junction City area.
The National Weather Service stated there wasn't a tornado in Perry County, Storm Team 4's Bob Nunnally reported. NWS said the storm had straight-line winds that reached 90 to 95 miles per hour. This was determined because all of the damage went in the same direction; nothing was twisted.
Nunnally went with NWS as they surveyed damage in Junction City, which is not too far from New Lexington.
Nunnally said there were downed trees and power lines and damage to buildings and fields. The damage was tremendous, and there still was more damage to be surveyed, he said.
Nunnally is forecasting mostly cloudy skies with a chance for scattered showers and thunderstorms today. The high will be 84 degrees. There will be continued chances for scattered showers and storms this evening.
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Storm Team 4's Tacoma Newsome said she saw a lot of neighbors getting together to help clean up the storm damage.
Newsome doesn't think there was one area house that wasn't touched by the powerful storm.
"It sounded like a freight train," one Junction City resident said.
"I don't know whether it was high wind or a tornado. It knocked trees down. Power is out. We have quite a mess," another resident said.
As of 11 a.m., there were 4,100 AEP customers in Franklin County without power, 4,200 Fairfield County residents and 2,560 Perry County residents.
South Central Power was reporting 1,941 homes with outages in Perry and 2,184 in Fairfield.
With the size of the clean-up effort, officials said it could take much of the day to restore power to Perry County residents.
"We got some damage, but we're alive," another resident said. There weren't any injuries out of the storm, according to Newsome.
Perry County's Level 2 road emergency was lifted Tuesday morning.
The current goal is to continue the clean up, Newsome said. Most of the county highways were clear at noon; crews were working to clear away trees and debris from residents' homes.
Stay tuned to NBC 4 and refresh nbc4i.com for more on this developing story.
To send a news tip or submit a story idea, e-mail stories@nbc4i.com.
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