OCEAN CITY -- A tornado careened across Ocean City in the 75th Street area, damaging buildings and blowing out the glass windows of cars.
A slew of witnesses said they saw a funnel cloud come sweeping into the resort from the Assawoman Bay around 77th Street, where it touched down briefly before rising again and continuing south across the beach.
Ryan Haley saw the tornado coming from the west toward his business, Atlantic Shore Realty on Coastal Highway's ocean side at 75th Street. He was filming the cloud with his cellphone at first but he retreated inside to hunker down when it came close to the building.
Haley said it "went crazy" for about 10 seconds and that he could hear things crashing around outside.
Surveying the damage afterward, windows were broken on his building and on both the vehicles parked in front of it. Debris riddled the parking lot and the streets nearby. Town staff were working with a backhoe to clear a few trees from Coastal Highway's median that had fallen to the street. Other debris, including a mattress, had blown onto the road as well.
The cloud was unofficially called a tornado by Accuweather meteorologist Frank Strait.
"It started out as a waterspout, which is basically a tornado over water, and if it touched down on land, then it's classified as a tornado," he said.
The National Weather Service later confirmed that the funnel cloud was a tornado.
Police had cordoned off most of the ocean side of 75th Street, where there was extensive damage to the outside of some buildings. Siding and parts of roofs had been blown off multiple condo complexes, and the 75th Street Medical Center's sign was nearly obliterated. A good portion of the roof of the Ocean Villas condos was blown onto the beach below.
Ocean City Town Councilman Doug Cymek said he'd heard most of the damage was located in that area. He and Ocean City Director of Emergency Services Joe Theobald were at the scene shortly after the event, which took place at about 3:45 p.m.
No injuries had been reported, and to Theobald's knowledge, the tornado only touched down in the damaged area, he said.
Theobald's strategy for post-storm management was simple: "We make sure nobody's hurt, and then we start putting it back together again," he said.
At 75th Street Medical, the staff saw it coming and quickly moved a handful of patients inside to an X-ray room, said radiology technician Jessica Slower.
"Oh my god, that was freaky," said 75th Street Medical receptionist Shelly Highsmith. "It came pretty quick and it stopped pretty quick. It blew me up the steps and into the building."
Dan Hillegas and Chris Bright were riding their motorcycles southbound on Coastal Highway when they saw the cloud and felt the wind.
"We were almost in it," Bright said.
Hillegas said they saw it touch down and sweep across the highway. One of their friends had been so overwhelmed by wind she had been knocked off her motorcycle.
Donna Starr and George Abell were riding a bus north at about 65th Street when she heard reports of a funnel cloud come across the driver's radio.
"It got extremely dark and windy first," Starr said, before she saw the cloud. "I was just sitting there, dazed. There wasn't much we could do."
"It was freakin' huge," Abell added.
The tornado was formed under atypical circumstances and was an isolated incident, he said. It was an "unusual situation" for a tornado to touch down in the area at that time, he said.
Tornadoes are typically formed when there a large amount of wind shear -- the change in speed or direction of wind over a short distance or time period -- is present.
The atmosphere was a "little unstable" Thursday, with a combination of warm weather and an incoming cold front, which could have caused enough churning in the atmosphere to create a tornado, Strait said.
"It wouldn't have been a classic tornado superstorm like you often see in the plains area, but that cold front could have caused it," he said.
The trajectory of the cloud wasn't immediately apparent, but Doug Antos and other residents who live on 62nd Street said they'd seen a funnel cloud in that area.
"You could see it swirling around," Antos said, adding that power in the area had abruptly gone out moments before he saw it.
Mike Terveer was visiting from Baltimore, staying at a condo at the Sandpiper along the 75th Street ocean block when he saw the clouds swirling over the bay, and thought, "That ain't good."
"It definitely sounds like a freight train, like they say," he said. "Stuff just flying everywhere. It's kind of cool, actually, as long as nobody got hurt. It's been a hell of a summer -- earthquakes, hurricanes."
-- Staff Writer Brian Shane contributed to this report.
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