3 Tornadoes Touched Down On LI: Planes Flipped, Home Destroyed

LONG ISLAND, NY — Three tornadoes touched down on Long Island Saturday afternoon, the National Weather Service confirmed Sunday night after wrapping up its final storm survey in eastern Suffolk County.

They are the first November tornadoes on record on the island, according to a tweet by Matt Brickman, an NBC New York meteorologist.

"The New York tornado database goes back to 1950 & there’s no record of any others," Brickman said.

The first report of a tornado on the island was at 2:37 p.m. in Woodmere, where several trees and power lines were knocked down. From there, the tornado, with peak winds of 85 mph, lifted and traveled toward the northeast toward Hempstead, Uniondale and Levittown.

In Uniondale, the tornado touched down again, tearing a roof off a two-story Colonial building on Liberty Street. The roof landed on a nearby house, the weather service said.

Scattered debris, including shingles, insulation and twisted siding was thrown into the next block up.

Significant damage was also noted near Clover Lane in Levittown, where a large tree feel onto a home before the tornado lifted at 2:55 p.m.

About a half hour later, a brief tornado touched down in East Islip.

The narrow tornado with top winds of 85 mph likely touched down at the southwestern end of Hollins Lane at 3:20 p.m. and then continued over Brushwood Court, Bayview Avenue, Josephine Lane and Kay Court before lifting over the JFK Elementary School sport fields and becoming a funnel cloud at 3:22 p.m., the storm survey report says.

A few dozen large trees were uprooted and minor roof and siding damage was observed on several houses, the report says of the damage in East Islip.

After departing East Islip, the funnel cloud briefly touched down as a weak tornado in the Frog Land and Jade Street area of Oakdale, causing a very large partially rotted oak tree to "topple onto and destroy a home," the weather service says.

The final and strongest tornado of the three with maximum winds of about 110 mph touched down just southwest of Francine Place and Mastic Boulevard in Shirley at 3:42 p.m. and then traveled northeast along the Long Island Rail Road and adjacent backyards.

After uprooting numerous trees, the tornado "hooked northeast over the Lidl supermarket and flipped over a 50-ton air handler unit on the roof before tearing off the parapet and collapsing the covered walkway" over Chipotle Mexican Grill, officials said.

"Public video showed the apparent tornadic circulation lifting northeast across the intersection of William Floyd Parkway and Montauk Highway" toward a shopping center "with debris being thrown in one direction or another," officials said.

"The tornadic circulation may have been briefly lifted at this point, with about a 50-yard swath of 65 t0 75 mph straight-line winds across the shopping center," officials said, adding, the "tornadic circulation then touched down once again in the northeast of the Applebee's shopping center" and it "lifted the entire roof off of a two-story multi-family home on the corner of Grand Avenue and McGraw Street."

Its path continued to Brookhaven Calabro Airport, where it flipped over small planes before the tornado ended in Manorville, according to officials.

No injuries were reported in any of the tornadoes.