Storm surveys confirm 3 tornadoes touched down on Long Island: National Weather Service
NEW YORK (WABC) -- The National Weather Service confirmed a third tornado touched down briefly on Long Island Saturday after conducting storm damage surveys in Nassau and Suffolk County Sunday.
The strongest tornado, an EF-1 touched down in Shirley and Manorville.
They say the first report of a touchdown was in Woodmere, where several trees and powerlines were down.
From there, the EF-0 tornado lifted and skipped in a few locations as it traveled northeast toward Hempstead, Uniondale and Levittown.
According to the NWS, the tornado touched down again in Uniondale, where it tore the roof off a two-story colonial building on Liberty Street, which landed on a nearby house.
Scattered debris was also thrown the next block up, including the intersection of Emerson and Goodrich Street.
Significant damage was also noted near Clover Lane in Levittown, where a large tree fell onto a house before the tornado lifted.
"I was actually doing work in my house and my wife- we had the alerts, and my wife said start closing the doors and I was like oh it's going to be okay and within five minutes I started closing up a little bit, some hail came and then I just heard the tree fell on the neighbor's house," neighbor Eddie Graboski said.
A second EF-0 tornado was confirmed to have touched down in East Islip, Suffolk County.
The NWS says the tornado likely touched down at the southwestern end of Hollins Lane and then continued northeast before lifting over the John F. Kennedy Elementary School sport fields.
A few dozen large oak, maple and pine trees were uprooted, and several were also snapped at the trunk or had long branches sheared off along the path.
"I ran downstairs, and I heard several big booms and everything shook," Guylaine Erickson said.
Guylaine Erickson didn't know what to do. The wind in Manorville was so vicious it flipped a family's camper on its side.
"I heard the wind blowing through the house -- the house creeping," Manorville resident Steve Hickey said.
When Hickey came to check on things, he spotted the rug from inside the camper, in the trees.
In Shirley, a Chipotle restaurant was badly damaged and a section of a roof was torn off of a shopping center.
A number of small planes were overturned at Brookhaven Calabro Airport.
Neighbors say the fast-moving storm certainly felt like a tornado -- and on Sunday night, the National Weather Service, confirmed that an EF-1 did, in fact touch down.
Over in Hewlett pictures showed trees down, a light pole snapped in half, and debris scattered on the ground. Crews came in and taped off the area for safety.
In New York City, the high winds downed a light pole that fell onto an M-31 city bus on 54th Street in Hell's Kitchen.
Storms also brought quarter-size hail along with cloud-to-ground lightning as the line raced east at 50 mph.
Video captured heavy hailstorms in Manhattan.
Eyewitnesses also captured footage of the hailstorms as it moved through New Milford, New Jersey.
PSEG Long Island is still working to restore power after outages affected thousands of customers.
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