Weather Service confirms record-breaking fifth tornado in North Bellport from Saturday storm
A downed fence of a home on Atlantic Avenue in North Bellport on Tuesday, where the National Weather Service confirmed a tornado came through last Saturday. Credit: James Carbone
The National Weather Service confirmed that tornadoes touched down Saturday in North Bellport and Hampton Bays, marking the first time in Long Island's history that six twisters hit the region during a single storm.
The North Bellport tornado went 1.3 miles and was an EF-0, the lowest-level tornado, with contained winds of between 70 mph and 85 mph, the weather service said.
The phenomenon lasted two minutes from 3:40 p.m. to 3:42 p.m. on Saturday, uprooted trees on Bellport Avenue, south of Sunrise Highway, then moved onto the Town of Brookhaven Landfill, according to Dominic Ramunni, a meteorologist with the weather service at Upton.
"A narrow tornado likely touched down in a forest of pine trees to the south of Sunrise Highway … leaving a 35-yard northward tracking path of sheared tree limbs and snapped tree trunks …" a Tuesday evening weather service survey report said.
After skipping across Sunrise Highway "The tornado likely tracked or skipped northeast across the landfill before causing extensive roof damage and blowing out the north facing garage doors of the Brookhaven Recycling Center."
The sixth tornado, confirmed late Tuesday, was an EF-0 that traveled from Hampton Bays to North Sea, the weather service said, adding it will release more details of that twister Wednesday.
The weather service had previously confirmed that four tornadoes had touched down on Long Island, including three in Suffolk County — East Islip to Oakdale, Shirley to Manorville and Remsenberg to Westhampton. Since the 1950s, Suffolk County had only seen 26 tornadoes before last weekend's storm, officials said.
Another tornado hit the South Shore Nassau County neighborhoods of Woodmere, Hempstead, Uniondale and Levittown. "We've never seen so many in one day," Ramunni said.
Three other tornadoes, including an EF-1, were confirmed in Connecticut.
There were no reported injuries on Long island, but the tornadoes did extensive damage.
All on Long Island were EF-0s except the one that struck Shirley and Manorville, which was an EF-1 — still considered "weak" — with wind speeds of 110 mph, the weather service said. That tornado lifted the roof of a two-story multifamily residence in Shirley, collapsed fences, sheared off shingles and flipped several small planes at Brookhaven Calabro Airport.
A narrow tornado in East Islip went 900 yards in two minutes, lifting over the sports fields of the John F. Kennedy Elementary School, and coming down again to snap several trees and do minor roof damage to several homes, officials said.
In Uniondale, it tore off the roof off a two-story building, and cut down a large tree in Levittown that fell into a house, the Weather Service said.
And on Suffolk's East End, a tornado blew out a reinforced cinder wall of a salt barn on the south side of Westhampton Gabreski Airport, meteorologists said.
With Keldy Ortiz
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.
