© Susan McNamaraOfficials are investigating the possibility of a tornado touching down in Wayne County that caused damage to this house on Route 89.
There were no reported serious injuries.
Fire officials said the tornado appeared to have traveled about five miles from South Butler, Wayne County, crossing Route 89 northeast to the town of Conquest in Cayuga County.
The National Weather Service has not officially classified the event as a tornado, but you can't convince Michael Dunn otherwise.
"I saw it. Oh yeah, it was a tornado," said Dunn, a volunteer with the South Butler Fire Department.
Dunn was in his yard working on his lawnmower when it suddenly became "pitch black - like someone turned the lights off. I could see the debris field around it," he said.
Then he turned and - dodging flying tree limbs - ran for the mobile home where he lives with his wife and two children, ages 10 and 8. He said he made them get in the bathtub and he stood in a doorway.
The tornado appeared to have touched down near a small ranch home at 13171 Cotten Road, where it toppled the chimney and antennas.
From there, it twisted trees two feet in diameter like corkscrews, downed power lines, pulled a mobile home off its foundation, and flattened at least one barn.
At 2935 Route 89, Carlton Gay's home, a duplex which used to have two sets of everything including kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms, now has one of everything, as one side of the house was ripped apart.
"I was born in this house," said Gay, 83. "And now what have I got?"
On his front lawn, a flowered quilt was skewered by a fallen tree limb, and the flashing from his roof was twisted around a telephone pole.
Across the street, his immaculately painted red barn was flattened.
A yellow motorboat, lashed to a trailer inside the barn, was in the middle of a cornfield.
The trailer hasn't been found.
Gay and his wife, Lila, were visiting relatives in Red Creek when they heard that a tornado had touched down in Savannah.
"We had no idea what to expect, but we didn't expect this. ... I couldn't fathom what was going on," he said.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing. No one was home, but there could have been - I had three grandchildren here the other day."
Added Lila, "The good Lord has always been with us, and he was good to us here."
The area will be deemed a disaster area, said Savannah Fire Chief Mike Kolczynski.
Displaced families will be temporarily relocated by the Red Cross.
"We have a lot of work to do," he said.
South Butler Fire Second Asst. Chief Rudy Vandelister said the assessment of the damage was just beginning.
"We're finding doors and pieces of roofs a half mile away," he said.
Weather service officials said the tornado classification could come within the next day or two.
"It is a possible touchdown; we don't have anyone on the ground right now to check it out," meteorologist Bob Hamilton said Sunday afternoon.
"We may have someone out there early this evening or tomorrow (Monday) morning, but we have no confirmation at this point. The radar indicated there was a possible tornado, but a lot of times you get that signature and you don't get a funnel that reaches the ground.
"So it is tough to tell until you survey the damage."
Closer to Rochester, nearly an inch of rain fell in the span of 75 minutes on Sunday afternoon causing flooding on roadways and power outages for about 5,500 customers in Monroe, Wayne and Cayuga counties.
Rochester Gas & Electric spokesman Dick Marion said heavy winds and lightning were to blame for the outages, 2,461 of which occurred in Wayne County.
Nearly 1,000 customers were without power in Monroe County and 2,092 lost power in Cayuga County.
Flooding created problems at underpasses along East Avenue and elsewhere.
"Gotta love Rochester," said Denise Hamilton, 30, who stopped short of the swamped North Winton Road underpass near University Avenue but had already gone through enough water that her older Cadillac had lost its power steering.
Motorists faced similar driving conditions one week ago after another heavy rain storm.
The problem, officials said, is rain-swept debris clogging street drains and the city's combined sanitary-storm sewer lacking capacity in some areas.
Crews try to keep up with and even anticipate the debris problem.
The latter is a costly, sometimes impractical matter to address.
"Some people liken it to, you can't build a church for Easter Sunday," said Mike Garland, director of environmental services for Monroe County.
Thus, underpasses on Union and Winton, along with Atlantic Avenue, Blossom Road and Culver Road, regularly flood.
On Sunday, police and firefighters blocked roads and tended to motorists who failed to anticipate the depth of the problem and stalled out in or just after clearing the rising pools.
Garland said the problem with simply putting in bigger pipes is, first, the cost.
And increasing the pipe size can create problems, in some cases, as there will not be sufficient flow during dry spells and that can lead to stagnation, grit build up and sewer gas rising out of street drains and manholes.
"It's been looked at on a fairly regular basis," he said, explaining some areas have been improved as part of other construction projects.
Traffic wasn't the only thing affected as the Rochester Red Wings game was postponed.
Back on Aug. 14, 1.21 inches fell at the Greater Rochester International Airport, which surpassed the record for the day set in 2001 by .03 inches, according to the National Weather Service in Buffalo. More than 2,800 customers on Monroe, Ontario and Wayne counties lost power during that storm.
Sunday brought .95 inches beginning shortly before 2 p.m., but the waters quickly receded.
Rochester benefits from an extensive storage system built in the 1970s and early '80s.
The storage system, consisting of 35 miles of 12- to 16-foot diameter tunnels roughly 150 feet underground, can take in 175 million gallons during heavy rain.
In the past, all the excess flow would dump into the Genesee River, whereas today it heads to the VanLare treatment plant.
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