UPDATE: High Winds Force Dozens into Shelters

UPDATED (6:15 p.m.)—A strong storm that damaged more than 90 homes in the Parkville area and did considerable damage in the northeast section of Baltimore City remains under investigation by National Weather Service officials.

Investigators were on the scene today surveying damage in an area stretching from Morgan State University to Joppa Road in Carney in an effort to determine if a tornado touched down early Wednesday morning.

In a statement released tonight, the National Weather Service said it was awaiting additional information necessary to determine the cause of the damage.

County officials said late this afternoon that inspectors determined that 89 homes sustained minor damage. Three others sustained severe damage that resulted in the homes being deemed uninhabitable.

Gov. Martin O'Malley and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake toured the Dutch Village apartments earlier today to examine the damage caused by high winds that tore through Northeast Baltimore and the county's Parkville area early this morning.

The governor is not a meteorologist, but the damage he has seen today convinced him that a tornado hit.

"The projectiles that we saw that were stuck into sides of buildings like spears, the roofs that were torn off at the bottom of the hill and deposited at the top of the hill, the cars that were thrown together as if they were toys—all of this would seem to indicate that we were visited last night by a tornado," O'Malley said. "The trees look like they've been literally picked up by the roots and tossed around."

Rawlings-Blake said the damage at the apartment complex on Perring Manor Road, which straddles the city and county, reminded her of "the devastation you would expect to see out in the Midwest."

"We are tremendously blessed that we're not out here talking about loss of life from what we've seen out here today," the mayor said. "We're making sure everything gets back to normal as soon as possible."

She said her office was receiving phone calls from concerned citizens looking to donate Thanksgiving dinners, clothes and blankets to those in need.  Officials have reported that there have been no fatalities associated with the storm, though one child suffered a broken arm, the mayor said.

Dozens of residents from the Dutch Village apartments have been evacuated from their heavily damaged buildings and have been transported to the Mount Pleasant Ice Arena. Cheron Porter, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Housing, said 369 units at Dutch Village were evacuated and 16 buildings were condemned in the complex.

The city is working to find arrangements for residents who don't have anywhere to go, such as a small shelter or hotel. Porter said "a good number" of affected residents will be able to go home within 24 to 36 hours.

April Vance, a Dutch Village tenant, felt the storm shortly after coming home from work Tuesday night. "I just walked in the door, shut the door, then I heard the rain and the wind," said Vance, 22.

She said half of her roof was torn off. There were "wires hanging, cars flipped, broken, everything."

Vance said she first made sure her neighbors were not injured—a tree fell through a child's bedroom next door, breaking his arm, as the mayor said.

It was several hours until she was evacuated around 7 a.m.

Tracey Frye, who also lives in Dutch Village, said her complex bore substantial damage in the storms and she said that shortly 2 a.m., the call came from city officials to leave.

"They gave us sufficient time, but you just grab what you grab and get out," said Frye, 33.

While city officials declined to give an estimate of how many people were there, the ice rink shelter was full of families. Some residents expressed frustration, since their homes weren't damaged, but many, like Frye, appreciated the city's response.

"It's not elegant, [but] it's warm, it's comfortable, " said Kevin Cleary, a city spokesman. "People's needs are being met."

Back at the Dutch Village apartment complex, dozens of residents were wandering around waiting to get on buses to be transported. Many people were carrying large crates with personal belongings. In a parking lot, three cars are jumbled on top of each other—the middle car is still lifted off the ground, sandwiched between the other two. But was it a tornado?

Kevin Witt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Baltimore Washington D.C. office, said investigators on the scene will examine how the damage is dispersed to determine if a tornado occurred or if it was a down-burst of cold air from the thunderstorm.

If the damage is circular—causing a spiral of fallen, overlapping trees—then it's likely that a tornado occurred. If the damage is in a straight line, then a down-burst of wind is the more likely culprit.

A down-burst occurs when rain-cooled air from the thunderstorm rushes to the ground and then spreads out, usually in one direction, said Witt. It's also called a straight-line wind.

Steve Prinzivalli, a meteorologist with WeatherBug in Germantown, said it was "highly unlikely" that a tornado occurred. He said a down-burst is probably to blame for the sudden burst of winds.

"There were some wicked winds blasting through the area," Prinzivalli said. "The threat of gusty winds today is not going to subside. It's going to be a pretty rocking day."

He said a storm centered in upstate New York yesterday was dragging along a cold front on its southern end that caused the high winds and thunderstorms that struck Maryland while most people were sleeping.

Prinzivalli said WeatherBug recorded wind gusts between 30 and 50 mph in the Baltimore area, nothing close to the 89 mph wind recorded near Washington D.C., he said. National Weather Service officials are continuing to survey the damage in the Parkville area to determine if a tornado touched down.

Residents from at least six severely damaged homes had to be taken to a shelter, including 88-year-old Mildred Byrley of the 1700 block of Ryewood Road in Parkville. Byrley's home, where she has lived for 40 years, was condemned due to damage to the walls.

She was taken to a temporary shelter at Bykota Senior Center in Towson with others. She said the wind came on suddenly.

"I was shocked," Byrley told Patch .

County inspectors touring the area found six homes that with serious damage. Byrley's was one of two that officials ruled uninhabitable, according to a statement released on Twitter by Elise Armacost, a spokeswoman for county Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Dozens of residents of the Dutch Village apartments have been evacuated to a shelter at the Mt. Pleasant Ice Arena.County emergency crews responded to a home on Taylor Avenue near Perring Parkway for a report of a tree that had fallen into a home shortly after 1:45 a.m., according to a statement released by Armacost.

Crews at the scene saw there were signs of a severe weather event with winds approaching 60 mph—not the 80 mph that has been previously reported. The wind moved cars, knocked down trees and power lines and dislodged roofs, shingles and fences.

Baltimore Gas & Electric began its storm operations at 1 a.m. today and is reporting that at around 1 p.m. nearly 2,000 were still without power. About 7,000 people in Baltimore County were without power at one point.

According to a BGE map, outages are mostly concentrated in Northeast Baltimore and Parkville, with only a handful of Towson customers affected.

Villa Cresta Elementary School and Parkville High School have been closed today because they have no power, according to the Baltimore County Public Schools.