Tornado Hit Massachusetts During Furious Storms: NWS

NORTH ATTLEBORO, MA — The National Weather Service confirmed that an EF1 tornado hit Massachusetts during furious storms that rocked southern New England Wednesday night.

The tornado formed around 11:30 p.m. over Lincoln, Rhode Island, and traveled due east into Cumberland before ending just over the Massachusetts border near Cushman Road in North Attleboro, according to the weather service.

The twister had wind speeds of up to 100 mph and was about 100 yards wide, the weather service said. The tornado snapped and uprooted trees, some of which fell onto houses in the border area.

The weather service issued two tornado warnings just as the storm was beginning to spin up over eastern Rhode Island. The warnings were among dozens of flash flood and severe thunderstorm alerts issued between Hartford, Worcester and Boston as a bow-shaped mesoscale convective system swept across the region.

Wednesday storms caused damage across New England and in Pennsylvania earlier in the evening Wednesday. The weather service measured wind gusts in excess of 70 mph before the storm slammed into southern Massachusetts.

Wednesday's tornado was the first in Massachusetts since September, when North Attleboro experienced an EF0 tornado.