EF1 tornadoes rip roof off hotel in Cape Cod, leave trail of damage
Stunning video shows an entire roof lift off a hotel in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, as storms tore through the area on July 23. The National Weather Service confirmed an EF1 tornado touched down before damaging trees and power lines.
Two tornadoes with maximum wind strength of 110 mph swept through Cape Cod on Tuesday, the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed, tearing the roof off a local hotel and stirring up wild scenes all around the famed New England vacation spot. The rare tornadoes left a trail of destruction and triggered a state of emergency in Harwich, Massachusetts.
The damage on Cape Cod was a combination of two EF1 tornadoes in Yarmouth and Harwich along with plenty of straight line wind damage, the NWS reported.
"Several areas of low pressure were moving northeastward along a cold front that was just off the Eastern Seaboard, which was the same front responsible for the severe weather for the I-95 [corridor] Monday," AccuWeather Meteorologist Danielle Knittle said.
"A well-defined low over Long Island [Tuesday] morning tracked over southern Massachusetts, the Cape and Island with strong rotation, and the tornado formed right in the center of that low near the lowest pressure," Knittle said.
Damage after the tornado in Cape Cod on Tuesday. (Twitter/CapeProducer)
Prior to Tuesday's event, only three other tornadoes have occurred on Cape Cod since 1950, according to the NWS. Several perspectives of the wild weather striking various parts of the popular summertime destination emerged. One harrowing video was shot by Corey Smith, who was on a sailboat moored in Stage Harbor in Chatham when the storm ripped through.
The video Smith, a marine services technician who was working when the storm hit, captured shows several boats in the harder bobbing up and down amid rough waters stirred up by the high winds.
Smith told Boston 25 News that he "turned around and looked towards the front of the boat, the bow, and just saw this wall of rain coming straight at me. It hit like a truck and instantly [the] water was rough.” Smith said the weather changed so quickly, he didn't have time to flee so he hunkered down.
“I tried to stay near the hatch in case anything did happen and I had to get out of there,” he added. “I was just braced in the doorway.”
Another sensational video clip showed the roof of a hotel being blown off by powerful winds. The footage, shot by Terry-Ann Simpson, showed wind gusts tugging at the roof of the Cape Sands Inn in Yarmouth. Then, suddenly, almost the entire roof lifted off the building and blew away.
"It pulled pieces of the awning off one at a time and then it pulled a whole section of the roof," one of the guests staying at the hotel told ABC News. According to CBS4, the owner of the hotel just bought the inn a year ago and recently replaced the roof. The rains accompanying the tornado left many rooms flooded and the owner said one-third of the hotel is now unusable heading into peak tourist season.
The impact from the tornadoes prompted Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker to post a message on Twitter ensuring jittery residents that government agencies were working to address the devastation.
Traffic was shut down in the center of Harwich and town officials have requested Eversource "to cut off power to the community" as the cleanup continues. More than 45,000 people were without power as of Tuesday evening.
The Barnstable County Regional Emergency Planning Committee opened an emergency shelter at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School emergency shelter at 7 p.m., due to the mounting power outages.
There were reports of downed trees and power lines but no known injuries, CNN reported.
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