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An unusual and intense tornadic water jet tore through parts of Smith Island, Maryland, Thursday evening, leaving extensive damage to homes.
The videos show the tall twister, which developed from a strong, rotating thunderstorm over the Chesapeake Bay, bearing down on an island community in the middle of the bay, surrounded by a rotating column of water.
There were minor injuries, although no one was “seriously hurt” or killed, Ewell Fire President Robert Jones said, according to a report in Chesapeake Bay Magazine.
The funnel cloud “just looked like a normal waterspout, but it just kept coming,” said Betty Tyler, whose bed and breakfast was damaged by the storm. “It didn’t stop when it landed … it tore through the third floor of my building. Completely gone. I destroyed my neighbor’s house. She was in bed and that’s the only room that wasn’t crushed.
While describing the damage in a phone interview Friday, Tyler said her 88-year-old neighbor appeared unharmed. “They got her out,” Tyler said. “Her whole house collapsed around her,” she said. “It’s just a pile of rubble.”
Tyler said neither she nor any of the guests were inside the bed and breakfast when the water jet hit. She said the damage extended along the path of the water jet.
“Boats have turned,” she said. “The gas station here, all the gas pumps are on the ground.”
Images on social media showed collapsed homes and shredded walls in an area home to just over 200 people. Smith Island consists of three island communities and is located on the border of Maryland and Virginia territorial waters about a dozen miles from the mainland.
“We stand ready to assist the local response,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) tweeted Thursday evening.
“I just spoke with Somerset County Sheriff Ron Howard regarding the situation on Smith Island after last night’s storm,” he added Friday morning on Twitter. “Damage assessment teams are on site. We offered him the full resources of the state to help with the response.
The tornado that touched down in the community of Rhodes Point around 7:30 p.m. Thursday has not yet been officially rated by the National Weather Service. Such an assessment requires an in-person survey by forecasters, usually within a few days of a twister.
The tornado struck with little warning, preceded only by a special weather statement warning of 45 mph wind gusts. Because Smith Island is located near the middle of three National Weather Service radar detectors, the radar beams intersect the storm about 8,000 feet above the ground; this was likely too high to properly detect the type of atmospheric rotation that would warrant a tornado warning.
Water jets are often mistaken for harmless sea-borne spinaps, similar to dust devils, which quickly decompose when they encounter land. Some so-called fair-weather waterspouts that are not associated with thunderstorms fit this description.
But tornado water jets, according to NOAA, “have the same characteristics as tornadoes on land,” even though they develop over open water — and can cause significant damage when they make landfall.
Such tornadic water currents sometimes accompany hurricanes and are sometimes found along the Gulf Coast, especially in western Florida. Noteworthy twister outbreaks in 1999, 2016, and 2020 involved extensive damage caused by tornadic water jets.
The environment over Maryland on Thursday had ingredients that appeared unfavorable for twister development, with strong instability — atmospheric energy similar to fuel for storms — but very little wind shear that helps thunderstorms organize and rotate. As a result, forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center did not designate a tornado risk area.
Thunderstorms sometimes rotate and produce twists in environments that appear inhospitable for tornado development.
Terrain features such as rivers and hills are known to increase the amount of atmospheric circulation available to storms in ways that are difficult to predict, although it is unclear whether this allowed Thursday’s tornado to develop despite the unfavorable atmosphere.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help with recovery and cleanup efforts.
This is a story in progress and has been updated.
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