The National Weather Service sent a assessment team to Monterey yesterday to determine if straight line winds or a tornado was responsible for a trail of damage Saturday night from Putnam County all the way east towards the Smokey Mountains. According to the weather service, straight line winds of 95 miles per hour caused wide spread damage in Cookeville and winds up to 85 miles per hour hit southern Overton County and Monterey.

As the line of severe storms entered Cumberland County, the straight line winds eased up by little. According to the National Weather Service, winds of 85 miles per hour was responsible for widespread damage in the Lake Tansi area of Cumberland County. Trees were reported down in numerous areas of the county.

The National Weather Service ouf of Morristown sent storm survey teams to Roane, Morgan, Loudon, Blount and Knox counties to assess damage there. The storm did exhibit some weak rotation aloft on radar at times as the line of severe storms passed through the counties, but no tornado paths were found from the team. The majority of the damage consisted of downed trees with damage to structures from trees falling on them. Winds within the damage areas in these counties was set at between 70 to 80 miles per hour.

The National Weather Service says the overall severe weather event that took place Saturday night (May 27, 2017) was a derecho with widespread thunderstorm wind damage. Within the derecho, a bow echo surged forward in these counties where the strongest winds were indicated. A derecho is a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms and sometimes thunderstorms that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds

Clean up continues today for many areas. Power crews have worked non-stop since the storm hit and continue to do so to restore power. Power companies wish to remind those still without power to be patient as the outages are widespread. Crews are working as hard and as safely as they can to restore power to all that lost power.