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The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado touched down in the Rye Brook area Tuesday, July 21.
"The National Weather Service in coordination with local and state public safety officials confirmed a short lived and intermittent EF0 tornado that developed in Purchase, Westchester County, NY and traveled east northeast toward Rye Brook, NY," a statement on the NWS website reads.
The NWS specified the path of the storm, saying, "The tornado likely began on Manhattanville College campus where it uprooted several trees in addition to snapping large branches."
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The NWS said the tornado then likely lifted before touching down in two more locations on Lincoln Avenue near Loden Lane then headed northeast before touching down a final time near Lawridge Avenue.
The NWS and Westchester County Office of Emergency Management evaluated damage reports near Purchase and Rye Brook in Westchester after damage patterns observed between 4 and 4:30 p.m. Tuesday appeared to be consistent with possible tornado activity.
Other confirmed tornadoes in the region include two in New Jersey's Sussex and Morris counties Tuesday.
'It was really very frightening'
At around 4 p.m. Tuesday, Laurie Landes peeked out the front door of her house on Dorchester Drive in Rye Brook. She watched in shock as fierce gusts flattened the trees dotting her front yard.
“You could hear the wind,” she said. “It looked really unbelievable.”
She said she quickly grabbed her husband, and they headed to the basement.
“I didn't know what was going to come down," said Landes, recalling hearing a large crack while the storm raged. "It was really very frightening."
A thick tree branch had broken off during the storm, crashing through her power lines before falling across her front yard. As of noon Wednesday, her power was still out.
The felled tree was the fourth to fall onto Landes’s property since May. The latest incident took place Fourth of July weekend, when a tree limb tore through a window at the back of her home during violent storms.
“It costs thousands of dollars to take them away,” she said. “We’ve definitely exceeded our tree budget.”
Broken branches and tattered leaves were scattered throughout Landes’s neighborhood on Wednesday morning. Trees, snapped at the trunks, were sprawled across the yards of other nearby homes.
Jordan Magnus, a Rye Brook resident living on Country Ridge Drive, passed through Dorchester Drive on her morning walk. She was shocked by the destruction.
“It’s really bad there,” she said, adding she lives a short walk away and saw no damage to her property. “It’s a night and day difference.”
Magnus recalls seeing heavy rain and hearing blares from sirens at the nearby Blind Brook Club golf course throughout Tuesday evening, but said she experienced nothing that would cause her to think a tornado had touched down nearby.
“We’ve had a couple of power surges, and I didn’t even experience one yesterday,” she said.
Lorie Gierada, who lives a short distance from Landes, moved to Rye Brook six months ago, right after a tornado ripped part of the roof off her house in St. Louis, MO.
When she heard rumors of a potential tornado touching down near her new home yesterday, she said her mind raced right back to the destruction of her old one.
“There was just horrible devastation in our city,” she said. “It’s scary to think that it can just happen that suddenly.”
However, Gierada said she never saw any of the “frightening signs” of a tornado Tuesday, aside from heavy rains.
“The skies didn’t get particularly weird looking or dark,” she said. “The wind didn’t seem to be blowing that hard.”
Regional meteorologists discuss possible tornado in Westchester
Regional meteorologists are claiming a weak tornado briefly touched down at around 4:10 p.m. Tuesday near Rye Brook before making its way toward Greenwich, Connecticut as thunderstorms swept through the area.
In a Facebook post, meteorologist Tyler Jankoski claimed the tornado was likely an EF0 or EF1 on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale, which measures tornado intensity based on observed damage. Jankoski, along with other meteorologists, used radar scans to confirm a tornado touchdown.
Rachel Frank, a meteorologist with FOX 61 in Hartford, Connecticut, said Doppler radar detected rotation "indicative of a spinning column" and appeared to show tree branches being lifted into the air.
Tom Jines, a senior meteorologist at Accuweather, said he came to the same conclusion.
"It looked like there was a tornado out of that thunderstorm," he said. "From a radar point of view, it certainly looks like it."
Contributing: lohud's Michelle Grisales and USA TODAY Network New York Connect reporter Alexandra Rivera.
This story was updated with new information.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: National Weather Service confirms Westchester hit by tornado on Tuesday
