National Weather Service Confirms EF-1 Tornado Struck Salisbury

Wyn Delano
WMAL.com

SALISBURY, MD. (WMAL) – The National Weather Service has confirmed that an EF-1 tornado briefly struck Salisbury, Maryland, on Monday afternoon.

Meteorological technician James Foster said in a phone interview Tuesday that the tornado “came out of the storm cell and…lasted probably all of three or four minutes.”

The tornado ripped through a 1.5 mile stretch of the city of about 30,000 people. Its path cut through part of a neighborhood and some athletic fields.

The mayor of Salisbury, Jake Day, said that he knew that the storm was a tornado even before the National Weather Service confirmed it:

“I think the photographs and the video that we all saw during the storm; that confirmed for us that it was a tornado, though it certainly looked like it to the untrained eye.”

Two homes were condemned, and a vacant commercial building collapsed.

The winds also flipped over cars and knocked down trees and power lines.

“In my 35 years living here and being on this earth, no one can recall a tornado hitting Salisbury.” Day told WMAL.

“The damage itself,” the mayor added “whether it was called a tornado or not didn’t matter…this was an unusually significant event for our area.”

However, no major injuries or deaths were reported.

The Associated Press Contributed To This Report