For just the fourth confirmed time since 1950, a tornado touched down in Carroll County on May 6.

According to the National Weather Service’s Blacksburg office, an EF-O tornado with estimated winds of 75 to 85 miles per hour was reported three miles southeast of Galax between 10:25 and 10:29 p.m. that evening. Weather officials said the tornado was intermittently on the ground approximately 1.8 miles from the intersection of Peaks Mountain Road along Martha’s Knob Road and then east-northeast to the intersection with Dickey Drive. Several dozen trees were snapped or uprooted and one structure was slightly damaged by a falling tree. Officials said the storm touched down in Grayson County and crossed into Carroll County with a path width of 15 to 20 yards.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, the May 6th tornado was the first confirmed tornado in Carroll County since 1979 and only the fourth since 1950. The last confirmed Carroll County tornado occurred on July 4, 1979, with the worst damage taking place on Hardscuffle Road in Hillsville. Before that, a tornado destroyed a barn owned by Mr. and Mrs. Euell Spence, south of Dugspur, on August 21, 1977. Five people were injured in the early morning hours of August 1, 1965 when a tornado overturned a trailer with five people sleeping inside it in the Ground Hog Hill section of Carroll County. That tornado also reportedly uprooted large trees, ripped apart farm buildings and flattened crops.

G.E. Isaacs, Jr. was working on his checkbook in his home on Dickey Drive on May 6 when he heard the tornado rip through the trees all around his home.

“It didn’t sound like a freight train like most people say. It sounded like a 747 was sitting on top of my house getting ready to take off,” Isaacs said. “You know how a jet sounds when the brakes are on and they are getting ready to take off and throttle up? That is what it sounded like.”

Even though the tornado did quite a bit of damage to Isaacs’ property, he said he was extremely fortunate. The tornado flattened the bed on his farm truck, busted the glass out of his Dodge Ram Charger, and put some dents in his tractor. It also took down 37 trees in the woods near his home.

“It was kind of like hitting the lottery, but just not getting paid for it,” Isaacs joked. “It took trees out all around the house, but it didn’t do any damage to the house, so God was looking after me.”

Isaacs said a neighbor also lost about three trees in the tornado, which caused slight structural damage to the neighbor’s home.

WDBJ7 meteorologist Jay Webb said the May 6 tornado in Carroll County was the weakest type of tornado (an EF-0) on the Enhanced Fujita scale. Webb said the mountainous terrain of Carroll County makes tornados in the area a rare occurrence.

“Two things I think have a lot to do with it. The mountains obviously choke off a lot of the updrafts and downdrafts in a severe thunderstorm and it makes them harder to form. If they do form, it makes them harder to sustain themselves, just like the one in Carroll County that was only on the ground intermittently for a mile or two,” Webb said. “The other big thing is look at where it happened. If you are in a more densely populated area, more people around it are going to notice it, so I think that has a lot to do with it. A lot of people think we can’t have tornados because of our mountains, but that is a misnomer. Obviously we can. I have seen them in Harrisonburg, and Roanoke had one last summer.”

Of the three previous confirmed tornados in Carroll County, two occurred during the month of August, while the other one took place in July. Webb said July is typically the most active month for tornados in Virginia because of the heat and humidity. But as Carroll County just found out, tornados can form as early as April or as late as November.

“Keep in mind this time of year you can get very bad thunderstorms in April and May just like you can in October and November because this time of year we have cold air trying to move out and warm air trying to move in. The exact opposite happens in fall,” Webb said. “Whenever you have a clash of those air masses, you can certainly get a severe thunderstorm. If the atmosphere is right, you certainly can’t count tornados out this time of year.”

Two days after the Carroll County tornado, an even stronger one ripped through 2.5 miles of Alleghany County, North Carolina on May 8. An EF-1, the N.C. tornado had estimated winds between 85 and 95 miles per house and destroyed a singlewide mobile home on Osee Road, injuring four people. Cement silos were collapsed by the storm and five other homes were damaged, according to the National Weather Service. Another brief tornado touched down near Jarvis Road the same evening in Alleghany County.