Cinder-block walls were ripped open at a California Closets warehouse, two barns were leveled on the Rockefeller estate, thousands of trees were uprooted and a car and trucks were flipped over when a tornado with winds approaching 160 mph ripped through Westchester County 20 years ago.
The storm just after 3:30 pm on July 12, 2006, initially touched down in Grand View in Rockland County, crossed the Hudson River alongside the Tappan Zee Bridge and over the next 15 minutes laid a path of devastation through Sleepy Hollow, Hawthorne, Valhalla and North Castle, before cutting through Greenwich, Conn. and ending in a waterspout over Long Island Sound.
While everyone who experienced the ferocious winds and what they wrought was sure it had been a tornado, it took Jeff Tongue about 24 hours to make that official after he had visited the damaged areas.
Tongue, science and operations officer for the National Weather Service’s Long Island office, proclaimed it a rare EF2 tornado with winds ranging from 112 to 157 miles per hour.
At a press conference he called it a “very unique storm,” pointing out that while most tornadoes only touch land for stretches of a quarter to half a mile, the tornado that hit Westchester the day before “was on the ground the entire length of the county.”
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This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Recalling EF2 tornado that struck Westchester 20 years ago
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News | USA TODAY Network
