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Yes, a tornado touched down in central Pennsylvania on Sunday

Field crews were out in Juniata, Perry, and Dauphin Counties on Monday, trying to determine if a tornado touched down Sunday.

DAUPHIN COUNTY, Pa. — Sunday’s storm left sporadic damage throughout Juniata, Perry, and northern Dauphin Counties.

A tree outside a home on Shade Road in Lykens was uprooted. 

The family told FOX43 on Monday that it had been standing for at least 200 years.

“My mom was at the window and she physically [saw] it go down and said it fell slow, very gracefully until it hit the ground," said Shawn Sitlinger.

Sitlinger says he's thankful no one was injured but was a little sad to see the tree go.

“When I was a kid growing up I would sit underneath it and I actually just sat under it two or three weeks ago so [it's kind of] sentimental…it’s a shame to see it go," he said.

The fallen tree was some of the more impressive damage left behind in northern Dauphin County, as well as several utility poles that came down on Specktown Road in Lykens.

Just minutes away, Carl Baumgardner and other members of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Mifflin Township spent Monday morning cleaning up the battered church property.

“It was a pretty powerful storm," said Baumgardner who lives in nearby Elizabethville. "Had a lot of big limbs down this morning, branches and leaves. A lot of clean-up work”

The storm led the National Weather Service (NWS) to issue a tornado warning on Sunday.

An NWS field crew was in town Monday, surveying the damage and trying to determine if one did in fact touch down. 

“[We had] a lot of wind and a lot of rain," said Baumgardner. "We might have had over an inch of rain in a short period of time”

“Not sure if it was straight-line wind or a twister," added Sitlinger. "Couldn’t tell you, it was just whiteout everywhere here."

A final determination from the NWS was that a brief E-0 tornado touched down near Route 147 in Upper Paxton Township, Dauphin County. 

According to the NWS, trees were downed and the damage was intermittent as it traveled east for about a mile. 

The survey found a larger area of more sporadic, non-tornadic wind damage to the north of the tornado track, which extended nearly 20 miles from Seven Stars in Juniata County to Gratz in Dauphin County. The damage mostly consisted of downed trees and tree limbs, as well as downed powerlines on Specktown Road in Lykens Township, Dauphin County. 

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