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A sprawling, rotating supercell swept over the D.C. region Wednesday, producing a possible tornado that tore through parts of Montgomery County in Maryland. The twister sent debris flying into the air, knocked down trees, damaged homes and blocked some roads in the area.
The severe weather system also brought heavy bands of rain and a barrage of tornado warnings to other parts of the D.C. area, a concentration of which were in the area of Montgomery, Frederick and Loudoun counties Wednesday evening.
Another cluster of tornado warnings were then issued in northeastern Maryland.
After an initial batch of storms Wednesday afternoon, a strong line of storm cells formed before 7 p.m. in the area of Montgomery, Frederick and Loudoun counties and was capable of producing tornadoes. The system was moving east at 20 mph.
The supercell produced rotation in several areas, leading the National Weather Service to issue tornado warnings in quick succession in those counties, followed by another series of warnings in northern and eastern portions of Maryland affecting Baltimore, Howard, Anne Arundel and Carroll counties.
WTOP’s Dave Dildine was on the ground in Gaithersburg, Maryland, as a confirmed tornado swept through the area.
“It just went right over me,” Dildine said. “It’s swirling, the sky is swirling like a top. I can confirm there is a tornado on the ground in Gaithersburg. I am just off of Quince Orchard Road, the circulation to my east. … A couple of small branches were taken down, this is not a very powerful tornado at this point but that can change rapidly, and that’s why you’re inside, in a basement.”
Dildine said it was a well-defined twister.
“A lot of tornadoes in the mid-Atlantic are ragged. They’re difficult to see. This was as clear as day — the sky rotating like a top spiraling down above Quince Orchard Road. … And you could see a funnel cloud descending to the ground. A swirl of leaves, the tree canopy twisting and turning in the wind. It came very close to me — it was just to my north,” he said.
The radar confirmed a tornado was spotted over Germantown at 7:28 p.m. moving east at 25 mph. The National Weather Service said the tornado was in the area of Germantown, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Olney, Aspen Hill, Montgomery Village and Redland around 7:35 p.m. The agency will sent surveyors out to confirm the damage was caused by a tornado on Thursday.
Tornado leads to collapses, rescues
The NWS described the tornado as “large, extremely dangerous and potentially deadly.”
Montgomery County Fire and Rescue spokesperson Pete Piringer said in a series of posts on X that the twister collapsed multiple structures in Gaithersburg, trapping people inside. Structures were collapsed on Rolling Road, Holly Drive and Dogwood Drive near Tulip Drive, according to Piringer.
In the 400 block of Dogwood Drive, fire and rescue personnel responded for the report of a downed tree that caused a building collapse, trapping five people in the home, according to County Fire Assistant Chief David Pazos.
“An enormous hardwood tree, I mean the root ball on this has got to be over eight, nine feet tall. And this tree collapsed on the house during the height of the storm,” WTOP’s Dick Uliano reported from the scene in the Deer Park neighborhood.
All five were successfully removed from the home, Pazos said. Four were taken to the hospital with injuries described as non-life-threatening and the other occupant had more serious injuries, according to Pazos.
“I talked to some of the neighbors next door here, one woman said she scurried to the basement. She could hear the roar of this storm that sounded very much, to her, like a tornado she experience in Michigan when she was a child. Another man next door said he saw the swirl debris, and indeed we have a lot of leaf debris in the area, limbs down, power out in the area,” Uliano said.
Elsewhere in Gaithersburg, east of Route 355 on Holly Drive, a home with one person inside was hit by a tree. Dildine spoke with that lone occupant.
“He described it as, his word was ‘terrifying,’ describing thumps and crashing as tree debris rained down into and next to his home,” Dildine said.
The man declined medical treatment. The area surrounding that home was badly hit by the tornado, Dildine said.
“There is a lot of damage in this part of Gaithersburg, specifically on the east side of town. A number of streets are impassable. It took a while just to get over here — twisted wires, large trees down and, again, some structural damage,” he said.
A radar-confirmed tornado was also seen in Poolesville and in Leesburg shortly before Gaithersburg was hit.
Poolesville, Maryland, tornado @MontgomeryCoMD pic.twitter.com/baqGoIqLhO
— Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) June 5, 2024
In addition to rotation, the storm was producing hail as large as three quarters of an inch in certain areas, NWS said.
“This whole atmosphere is quite unstable in this area thanks to that warm front that came through, so more severe weather is possible for the next couple of hours. I think that by about 9 o’clock, the worst of it should be out of here,” WTOP meteorologist Mike Stinneford said.
As an earlier round of storms Wednesday afternoon pushed north and west, rotation kicked up and triggered tornado warnings across the region, including in Frederick, Carroll, Charles and Baltimore counties in Maryland. The system produced “blinding downpours,” according to Stinneford, downed trees and snarled traffic during the afternoon rush.
WTOP’s Jessica Kronzer and Emily Venezky contributed to this report.
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