Upper Freehold Clearing Debris From Tornado With 90 MPH Winds

UPPER FREEHOLD, NJ — The National Weather Service confirmed that Allentown to Cream Ridge in Upper Freehold Township both experienced an EF-1 tornado on Saturday, with winds up to 90 mph, downing many trees and wires.

And Department of Public Works Director Sal Fiorenzo said Tuesday that 47-square-mile Upper Freehold Township is gradually getting back to normal after the impact of the storm.

At Allentown Borough, a borough employee said there was only tree damage, and no injuries or other major damage.

Fiorenzo in Upper Freehold said the tornado seemed to make a track diagonally across the township. There was a lot of tree damage and downed wires, he said.

He said some individual homes are still without electricity, although JCP&L confirmed most power is restored. On Saturday, 430 customers were without power, according to the utility.

The other Monmouth County tornadoes were the Jackson-Howell and Sea Girt tornados, each with an EF-2 rating (winds to 12o mph). There was another separate EF-2 tornado in Jackson.

The Cream Ridge tornado has estimated winds up to 90 mph. As of Tuesday afternoon, no other information was available from the National Weather Service on the track the tornado took, but the service is planning to provide that information soon.

Fiorenzo said the storm Saturday night lasted about 30 to 40 minutes and there was also hail.

He said his township crews have been cleaning up debris and all roads were safe now. Some school buses were rerouted because of tree debris or downed wires, but school has been in session.

Electric power was disrupted to about 430 customers on Saturday, according to Chris Hoenig, of JCP&L. On Tuesday he said Upper Freehold is basically "cleaned up" in terms of power issues, with a "handful' of outages, but some may have been outages not related to the storm.

There was also an EF-1 tornado confirmed in Crosswicks in Burlington County, which Fiorenzo said is quite close to the Upper Freehold/Allentown Borough area. There was also an EF-1 tornado confirmed in Cinnaminson-Delran-Moorestown (Burlington County), according to the National Weather Service.