The National Weather Service Tuesday confirmed that a tornado touched down in Pierce Township around 3 p.m., uprooting massive trees, blocking neighborhood streets, and trapping families, prompting neighbors to grab chainsaws an d clear the roads themselves.People along 10 Mile, Pond Run, and Fagin's Run roads reported seeing tree after tree laying in the road, leading to a home off St. Steff's Run Road where a massive tree was uprooted just hours earlier.WATCH: Tornado confirmed by National Weather Service uproots trees in Pierce Township: Confirmed tornado uproots trees, traps families in Pierce Township neighborhood, National Weather Service saysThe homeowner said his father planted the tree in 1966. He said he was still processing the devastation when he returned home after the storm. He was not home when the tornadoes hit.A second massive tree is also down nearby, with root balls reaching approximately 20 feet in the air.On the nearby Spresser Hill Road, neighbors immediately grabbed chainsaws after the storm passed to clear the road. A family, including a daughter waiting with her grandparents, had been unable to get out. Spresser Hill Road has since been fully cleared. The National Weather Service is expected to survey the damage in the coming days to formally confirm the tornado and estimate its wind speed. But the agency said a tornado was confirmed in that area earlier in the day as the WCPO 9 First Warning Weather Team tracked a powerful line of storms moving through the Tri-State.WCPO 9 Meteorologist Mark Stitz said that investigators will examine the direction debris and trees fell to distinguish tornado damage from straight-line wind damage."If you can kind of imagine a wall of wind going towards a forest, all the trees fall in the same direction where the wind was coming from," Stitz said. "But then when you look at tornado damage, whether it's house or trees, vegetation, whatever it may be, you see on one side as you look down the path of that tornado, the trees go down this way, but on the opposite side they're coming down this way."Stitz said the type of trees damaged also helps investigators estimate wind speed."That type of tree takes a 70 mile per hour wind to go down, or maybe that type of tree, a little more sturdy, takes a 90 mile per hour," Stitz said. "So you look at the damage, and that's how you estimate how strong the wind was and therefore how strong the tornado was."The National Weather Service is expected to release its full assessment within the next couple of days.This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy. ...read more read less