Crime & Safety

Tornado Touched Down In Ocean County, NWS Confirms

Tuesday morning event ranked lowest on the Fujita scale for measuring tornado intensity

Stafford Police Capt. Thomas Dellane got it right.

Dellane told Patch Tuesday morning he thought that a violent storm that ripped through the township was a tornado.

"It looks like a tornado came through here," he said then.

The National Weather Service last night confirmed that a tornado did touch down at the intersection of Route 9 and Oak Avenue around 10:05 a.m. Tuesday.

The NWS said the tornado was 50 to 100 yards wide and two miles long. It was packing winds between 75 to 85 miles per hour, which ranks it an EF0 on the Fujita scale that measures tornado intensity.

The tornado "lifted" near the intersection of Hilliard Boulevard Avenue and Beach Avenue. It toppled trees, ripped off sections of roof on churches and downed power lines.

Power was out in the Hilliard Boulevard area early yesterday evening. The air was fragrant with the smell of downed evergreens as work crews fed the trees into wood chippers.

Come back to Patch later today for more updates.


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