Tornado touches down in Poolesville; No warning issued
POOLESVILLE, Md. - The National Weather Service confirmed an EF-0 Tornado touched down in Poolesville around 2 p.m. Saturday as a strong line of storms moved through the area.
According to FOX 5 Meteorologist Matthew Cappucci, all the radar data was in line with this being a brief tornado.
Cappuccii says it likely formed at the northern end of a squall line in what we call the northern bookend vortex region. That’s basically where the squall line turns around on itself and develops some counterclockwise spin that can be tornadic.
Winds reached 75 mph, according to the National Weather Service, as the tornado touched down in Poolesville for about a minute.
Kevin O’Neill and Steve Ross live in the Stevens Park area of Poolesville. As they took shelter from the storm Saturday, a downed tree fell in their backyard.
"[We] started getting rain coming in and then just a wall of water, and saw something fly by and decided we’re going to the basement right now," Ross said.
"And the dogs went crazy," O'Neil added.
More trees snapped during the storm, one even falling into a neighbor's back porch.
Trees fell onto the shed, which, ironically, has some of the critical tools Derek Soden wishes he had access to, so he can try and clean up his backyard.
"Neighbor called and asked if we were home, we said ‘no,’" Soden recalled. "It sounded like something was probably wrong, and he said there’s a few trees down."
Tornado touches down in Poolesville; Minor damage reported
A tornado with strong winds up to 75 mph touched down in Poolesville Saturday afternoon. Several trees were knocked down but no injuries or major damage was reported. FOX 5's David Kaplan spoke to some neighbors in the area who described the sights and sounds as the storm came through.
No tornado warning was issued.
Poolsville officials believe that no one was hurt, just property damage occurred.
Soden has three other pine trees next to his home and is thankful none of them fell.
"Those were the ones I was afraid of going through the house. So the shed, all the stuff in it, can be replaced or probably not, but the dog and the cats and the house, that would have been much worse," he said.
FOX 5 did see someone with the National Weather Service surveying the area and the determination that this was an EF-0 Tornado was made late Saturday night.
The tornado's path, the National Weather Service reported late Saturday, appears to have been 100 yards long and 25 yards wide.