This story was originally produced by the Valley News. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
Andrea and Tom Heitzman were in the kitchen of their home on Culver Hill Road in Lyme at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday when Andrea glanced out the window and noticed the wind begin to gust powerfully and remarked “my goodness look at those trees bend.”
A blink of the eye later the wind exploded and “everything started flying,” Andrea Heitzman said on Wednesday morning, standing outside her home while work crews cut and cleared four locust trees that had been snapped or uprooted by the fury and toppled across the roof.
“It was like the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ ” Tom Heitzman described, referring to the scene in the movie classic when a tornado lifts a Kansas farmhouse into the sky like a spinning top.
Extending his arm to point out the new vista to the horizon that had been opened up when Tuesday evening’s wind storm mowed down “at least 30 trees” that had previously blocked the view, Heitzman said it was all over in two minutes.
Although the monstrous wind quickly passed, Heitzman, a Lyme veterinarian, recognized what he saw outside his kitchen window.
“It was a funnel. I saw it,” Heitzman said, describing the tell-tale signs of a tornado.
Lyme was hardly alone when it came to being hit by a severe weather event on Tuesday. A heatwave across many parts of the country this summer has led to torrential downpours, flash flooding and property damage.
About 200,000 homes and businesses lacked power Wednesday in Northeastern states from storms, Associated Press reported. The East Coast from Maine to the Carolinas was warned of weather that could make it feel hotter than 100 degrees in some places.
“It was like the Wizard of Oz.”Tom Heitzman
Technically, the severe wind storm that snapped a path of trees like toothpicks on Tuesday evening through Lyme was not immediately classified as a tornado. On Wednesday, a team from the National Weather Service visited to survey damage and determine whether it was a tornado or “straight line winds” event.
But Lyme residents say they didn’t need to wait for the government to confirm what they experienced.
“When you see a very large rotating cloud that drops down in the shape of a funnel and touches the ground and does concentrated devastation in a circular pattern, the town of Lyme is considering it a tornado,” said Michael Hinsley, the town’s emergency management director. “That’s good enough for me.”
(Hinsley reported late Wednesday afternoon that the National Weather Service survey team informed him, following their visit, that a category EF1 tornado had in fact struck Lyme with maximum wind speeds of 110 miles per hour).
There were no reported injuries as a result of the wind, flying branches and airborne debris, Hinsley said.
But four homes had trees fall on them and a “three-bay garage” located behind a residence on Route 10 just north of Whipple Hill Road “was lifted and moved 20 feet and put back down, substantially intact,” he said.
Aaron Rich, chief of the Lyme Fire Department, said at the same property the wind sheared a solar array off its base and carried it more than 200 yards away, with pieces of the panels landing in trees “and who knows where else.”
The tornado lasted from 7:29 p.m. to 7:34 p.m., according to Rich.
Trees fell across and temporarily closed three roads: Whipple Hill Road, Post Pond Lane and Tavern Lane, Lyme road agent Scott Bailey said at the scene on Whipple Hill Road Wednesday morning.
Bailey was in Hanover on Tuesday evening when dispatch called him between 7:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. to report “trees down” in Lyme. He and a crew of four showed up on Tavern Lane with a front loader “to basically push stuff out of the way.” They worked until about 10:30 p.m., he said.
Whipple Hill Road, however, was the worst hit, with at least 30 trees of various sizes felled and laying across the road.
Four cherry picker trucks from power company Eversource and a crew of lineman were at work at the intersection of Whipple Hill Road and Route 10 on Wednesday morning replacing a utility pole that had been snapped, leaving nearby homes without power.
As of early Wednesday afternoon, Hinsley was aware of “less than a dozen homes” that remained without power.
“A lot of this is tremendous damage that is very focused and localized and most of it is on privately owned property,” he said, noting how Lyme at the time the tornado hit experienced a Jekyll-and-Hyde weather event.
He looked out one window on the left side of the room he was in at home located on the north side of the village and “saw it was dark, it was raining and there was unbelievably violent wind.” But when he turned to look out the window on the right side of the same room “it was overcast but you could see blue sky,” Hinsley recounted.
The tornado traveled over Post Pond and Route 10 and “continued on a northeast track, ripping down more than 100 trees along Whipple Road and went into the Heitzmans’ and then continued up Culver Hill Lane and Tavern Lane until it basically ran into Stonehouse Mountain (in Orford) and died,” according to Hinsley.
On Wednesday, Mike Aremburg, an arborist with Thomson Tree Service in Orford who was clearing a property on Tavern Lane of fallen trees, marveled at the destruction.
“Ninety percent of these trees are oaks. Oaks don’t do that,” he said, pointing out the trunk of an oak tree that had been snapped and splintered by the tornado. “Oak is a very strong tree. It must take some wind to bring those down, incredible power.”
“We do a lot of tree work and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Aremburg said.
Hinsley knew about one house in the path of the tornado in which the windows were blown out and “shards of glass were found embedded in the .... wall 16 feet” from the window.
Tom Heitzman said as soon as the tornado extinguished he went outside and walked around his property “in disbelief” as to the scene around him.
He is still assessing if there is structural damage to the house, which include some “cracked walls” but, at least, “no gaping holes” in the roof where trees landed.
Heitzman noted a new roof had been put on their house only three weeks ago.
Heitzman and his family were inside their home at the time the tornado hit and no one — including their two golden retrievers Archie and Millie — was outside in harm’s way.
The worst he could see that happened is the loss of about 30 trees across his property, which cleared a view of the distance not previously enjoyed.
“First World problems,” he reflected.
