Tornado is confirmed in Severna Park

Residents recover after storms down trees, power lines

From Sun staff and wire reports
The Associated Press and Sun reporters Arin Gencer, Phillip McGowan and Anica Butler contributed to this article.
Originally published September 29, 2006, 8:14 PM EDT

National Weather Service meteorologists have determined that a tornado with winds that reached 90 miles per hour touched down in the Severna Park area on Thursday night and traveled two miles before lifting in Pasadena.

Today, meteorologists who visited communities hit by the tornado to assess the damage ranked the tornado as an F-1 on the Fujita scale, which runs from F-0 to F-5.

Thirty-three homes in Severna Park and Cape St. Claire were damaged by fallen trees, and 13 were deemed uninhabitable, said Pam Jordan, a county land-use spokeswoman.

Margaret Michael remembers the silence, then what sounded like an explosion.

She'd been getting ready to head out to a class last night until she looked outside and beheld the scary sight. Trees, leaves and branches whipped wildly in the wind as rain poured down.

She decided instead to take her dogs downstairs, where she heard the thud. It was the sound of a poplar tree crashing through her kitchen ceiling, through which water gushed for hours. The poplar also put two more holes through her deck, added just a year ago.

Across the street in Severna Park, the devastation was worse. A fat trunk fell through 48 Whittier Parkway, crushing through its roof and tearing at least one room in half.

This morning, under a sky that bore no trace of the storm, neighbors roamed the streets to snap photos of the damage, comfort each other and start cleaning up. The sound of drills and cranes and trucks from tree-clearing companies served as constant background noise.

"I'd never seen anything like it," said Patricia Moffit, who lives down the street. At her house, the power was out for 10 hours.

Others are still waiting to have theirs restored. At 8 p.m., BGE reported 675 customers in Anne Arundel County were still without power. That is down from a systemwide total of 38,262 who lost service at some time during the storm.

Spokeswoman Linda Foy said she expected the "vast majority" of customers to have their power back by tonight.

The abundance of the damage occurred in the lower Magothy Beach area of Severna Park -- on North and South drives and Hemingway Lane, Rhonda Wardlaw, a spokeswoman for Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens, said last night.

Last night the National Weather Service confirmed tornadic activity -- accompanied by heavy rains and thunderstorms -- in Anne Arundel County, and said a trained spotter had seen a tornado in Severna Park about 6:35 p.m.

While wind speed in the areas of worst damage was unknown last night, a trained spotter's equipment recorded a gust reaching 66 mph at 6:09 p.m. near U.S. 50 in Bowie, where dime-size hail also was reported, the weather service said.

Other area damage included trees downed in Howard County's Lisbon area, and in a storm several hours earlier, trees and power lines downed in the Boring area of Baltimore County.

Rain amounts varied widely -- about three-quarters of an inch measured at The Sun's monitoring station near Centre Street, and as much as 3 inches in northern Baltimore County, according to the weather service.

The weather front associated with the storms was moving over the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland late last night.

The sight of a funnel cloud in the area brought frightening accounts from several witnesses who described seeing one carrying trash, tree limbs and other debris and traveling east near Ritchie Highway about 7 p.m.

Two teenagers were riding in a car south on Ritchie Highway (Route 2) when they saw a funnel cloud form at the intersection with Route 648 in Severna Park.

"I could see the transformers blowing out as it touched down," said James Porter, 19.

Porter said he wanted to follow it, but the driver, Chris Hawkins, thought better of pursing the funnel cloud.

"I was freaked out," said Hawkins, also 19. "I didn't want the wind to pick up my car."

Jen Edmonston, 38, of Severna Park said she was having dinner with her boyfriend, Scott Kinder, 41, at a restaurant near her Emerson Court home when she saw the funnel cloud and heard the windows rattling. "I was hysterical," Edmonston said.

On her street, downed trees damaged homes and cars and littered yards.

At the Severna Park MarketPlace shopping center, shopping cart corrals were blown apart or crumpled, and carts scattered.

Olive Bump, 86, who lives on Sunset Drive in Severna Park, said she was in her kitchen about 6:30 p.m. preparing dinner when the heavy rains and wind summoned her to the window.

"All of a sudden these gusts came along," Bump said. "It really scares you. You don't know what was going to happen."

She said some of her neighbors reported trees felled in their yards.

"I saw the wind came up all of a sudden," Bump said. "And it was blowing very hard and my trees bent way over. It made a real loud noise. I didn't hear the train that they talk about, but it was very, very -- the wind -- was very, very strong."

After tornado, time for cleanup

Rare storm hits two Anne Arundel communities, damaging 53 homes and leaving residents surprised at the destruction

By Arin Gencer
Sun Reporter
Originally published September 30, 2006

Margaret Michael remembers the silence, then what sounded like an explosion.

She had just gotten home from work when she looked outside and beheld a scary sight: Trees, leaves and branches whipped wildly in the wind as rain poured down.

Michael, who is in her 60s, took the dogs downstairs. Her foot hit the second step when she heard the crash.

"I thought maybe it was lightning striking a transmitter," Michael said.

But it was the sound of a poplar tree limb crashing through her kitchen ceiling, sending water gushing inside, and two more gouging holes into her new backyard deck.

Across the street in Severna Park, the devastation from the tornado that touched down Thursday night was worse. A big tree fell through 48 Whittier Parkway, crushing its roof and tearing away a portion of the house's side.

The two were among 53 homes in Severna Park and Cape St. Claire significantly damaged by the rare twister, said Pam Jordan, a county land-use spokeswoman. Fifteen were deemed uninhabitable.

Between 1950 and 2000, 25tornadoes have hit Anne Arundel County, said Jackie Hale, a spokeswoman for the National Weather Service's Baltimore-Washington forecast office. A total of 209 have hit Maryland between 1950 and 1998, she said.

The National Weather Service confirmed yesterday that the tornado touched down in Severna Park about 6:30 p.m. It traveled 2 miles and lifted in Pasadena about 6:40 p.m. At its height, the storm was 250 yards wide with winds of 90 mph, the weather service reported.

The weather service classified the tornado as a Category F1, applied when ground winds range from 73 mph to 112 mph. F1 ranks on the lower end of the tornado damage scale, which goes from F0 to F5.

The storm knocked out power to more than 38,000 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers, spokeswoman Linda Foy said. About 9:30 p.m. yesterday, BGE reported 626 customers in Anne Arundel County were without power.

The hardest-hit areas included Cattail Creek off the Magothy River, North Cape Arthur and Lower Magothy Beach, Rhonda Wardlaw, a spokeswoman for Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens.

Yesterday, under a sky that bore no trace of the storm, neighbors roamed the streets to snap photos of the damage, comfort each other and start cleaning up.

The sound of chain saws, cranes and trucks from tree-clearing companies served as constant background noise. BGE trucks dotted the street, with workers trying to repair the damage.

"I can't believe it," said Ed Pickwoad, who lives in the relatively unscathed portion of Whittier. "You read about it in Kansas and Nebraska, but I never thought this was going to happen."

Bob Burns, a Whittier Parkway resident whose roof had a hole from a tree that pierced through it, didn't need an official declaration to know a tornado had thrown branches and debris onto his wife's 2005 Honda Pilot, crushing it and an older Accord sitting in the driveway. He pointed to a piece of a real estate sign resting on his front lawn next to a cluster of branches. The sign blew over from a nearby shopping center.

On Emerson Court, Steve Cornacchia was waiting for one of many workers in the area to start removing the tree that buckled his roof. His wife, Kelly, was home with their daughters Thursday evening when the intense winds and pressure from outside also sucked up the doors to the attic.

"It was so loud, I didn't even hear the tree hit the house," Kelly Cornacchia said, describing the "roaring engine" sound that engulfed them.

Patricia Moffitt, who lives down the street from Margaret and Michael Michael's house, said she lost power for 10 hours. At her home and around the bend, the houses remained relatively untouched, without even the telltale smattering of tree leaves and branches in their front lawns.

Moffitt stood near 48 Whittier Parkway, close to a handful of onlookers with digital cameras in hand. They watched as men sawed through the tree trunk lying on the house, just one of the many ravages of the storm.

"I didn't know there was this much destruction," Moffitt said. "We've never had this."