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Storms near Cincinnati cause power outages, smashed ceilings and a postponed baseball game

Posted at 9:49 PM, Apr 03, 2018
and last updated 2018-04-04 07:46:32-04

Four walls and a roof aren't always enough to keep the weather out, Morning View, Kentucky resident Sierra Chitwood discovered Tuesday night. She was washing her hair when a tree in the yard smashed through the ceiling to join her in the shower.

"I didn't have time to react," she said. "When I opened up the curtain, the mirror fell and shattered, so I had to step around the glass. … I had to run, throw on a shirt and run out of the room because I didn't know if it was going to fall any more."

Chitwood's family members said the impact rocked their entire home, knocking items off of shelves. A neighbor, Patty Bray, said the storm absconded with her entire roof.

"It just got windy and noisy, and the kids thought it was ‘The Wizard of Oz,' so I said, ‘Let's go to the basement,'" she said. "Ten, 15 minutes later, we came up and we had no roof."

Another family's home caught fire after a lightning strike in Green Township. 

Although these encounters with the weather were among the most intense, families and communities across Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky found themselves facing power outages, fallen trees and flooded roads as the sun set Tuesday.

The Grant County Sheriff's Office posted a number of pictures showing bowed flagpoles, fallen power lines and overturned trailers in Williamstown, Kentucky, where resident Haley Finke said her basement had flooded and a downed tree had knocked out her power.

Looking at the sky, the Cincinnati Reds postponed their scheduled game against the Chicago Cubs to May 19.

And one couple needed the Loveland-Symmes Fire Department to rescue them from a car that became trapped in high water.

Although the entire area spent much of the day under a National Weather Service tornado watch, no tornado had been confirmed by the time the watch was canceled.