WOODSTOCK — Two confirmed tornadoes touched down in Bryant Pond village and Embden on Wednesday afternoon during severe thunderstorms.

National Weather Service meteorologist Dan St. Jean said Thursday that on The Enhanced Fujita Scale of tornado intensity, the twister that crossed North Pond and frightened Bryant Pond residents Jane Chandler and Bill and Nancy Uber, was an EF0 tornado, the weakest on the scale, with winds of 60 to 70 mph.

“It looks like they saw a tornado, and the fact that it carried some branches from the other side of the pond makes me think that it probably snapped some limbs or trees over there, so I’m going over there and have a look,” St. Jean said outside the home of Jim and Jane Chandler at the end of Camp Road off Gore Road.

That tornado hit land first, then the pond. The twister traveled an estimated 1,000 yards, sucking water into the air. It then went up and over the Ubers’ two-story house and became a funnel cloud, St. Jean said.

“It’s probably an F0 because I don’t see any evidence to indicate it was anything stronger than that,” St. Jean said.

The Embden tornado was a bit stronger, at EF1. St. Jean said that one cut an 8-mile by 200-foot swath through woods on the west side of Embden Pond down to Sand and Fahi ponds.

F1 tornadoes have winds of 73 to 113 mph, St. Jean said.

Putting it in perspective, the tornado that destroyed Joplin, Mo., was an F5, packing winds in excess of 200 mph.

The Ubers, who winter in Florida, are no strangers to tornadoes.

They said they survived the 2007 Groundhog Day tornado outbreak in central Florida where they live.

That supercell spawned three F3 tornadoes that killed 21 people, injured 76, destroyed more than 800 houses, damaged more than 1,145 homes and left a 70-mile trail of damage.

The outbreak was Florida’s second deadliest on record.

That’s why they love their summer home on the east shore of North Pond in Bryant Pond, considering it a tornado-free zone. That is, until Wednesday afternoon.

“Miraculously, no one was hurt,” Bill Uber said.

A wall of water

Shortly before 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Nancy Uber was in the house working on her computer. Bill said they saw on their television that a tornado watch was issued. A bit later, a tornado warning included Bryant Pond and Bethel.

That got their attention.

And then it began to hail — Ping-Pong-ball-sized hail.

“When it was hailing, it looked like someone with a machine gun was shooting the pond and you could see all the puffs of water coming up,” Bill Uber said.

Jane Chandler and Nancy Uber grabbed their cameras and began shooting pictures of the hail.

Nancy went outside to take photos and promptly got painfully dinged atop the head with a hailstone.

And then the noise stopped.

“It got very, very quiet,” Nancy Uber said.

Then suddenly, Bill’s medical records got sucked out of the house through a window and were blowing around in the air while Nancy tried to retrieve them.

St. Jean said that when a tornado is approaching, it sucks all the air into it.

“I looked up and I saw a wall of water coming at us and I said to Nancy, ‘Look what’s coming,’” Chandler said, describing the approaching tornado that towered above the treeline. “It was all white and swirling.”

“That thing was 300 yards wide,” Bill Uber said. “I could see debris from the lake — aquatic things — going up in the air, but I don’t know if any fish went up in it.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it and I’ve been here eight years and I live here year-round,” Chandler said.

The Ubers headed for cover.

“We didn’t even say, ‘Jane! Run!’ We just ran,” Bill Uber said.

Not having a bathtub to take shelter in, they ran for their narrow, first-floor bathroom, which is just outside the back door.

Once inside, Bill closed the door and held the handle shut.

Chandler stood mesmerized, watching the rapidly approaching mayhem.

When the tornado got near the Ubers’ home and the shore, Chandler said it suddenly lifted up out of the water and “jumped” over the house, headed for the woods.

The tornado cleared the pond, and the water it had sucked up suddenly fell back into the pond, creating a 4-foot wave that Bill Uber likened to a tsunami.

Chandler watched the wave slam into the Ubers’ flag-shaped wooden dock they’d set out Memorial Day weekend.

She said it lifted the 25-foot dock into the air, broke it apart and carried it out into the pond, taking Bill’s motorboat with it.

“Damn tornado,” Bill Uber said. “This is our little piece of heaven and we don’t want any more tornadoes.”

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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