By Daniel de Vise and Jenna Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 21, 2008
Two tornadoes ripped across parts of Washington's Maryland suburbs yesterday, lifting roofs, smashing windows and toppling trees, as thunderstorms soaked the area. No injuries were reported immediately from the twisters, which struck Prince George's and Charles counties.
However, authorities said heavy rain contributed to a chain-reaction crash on the Capital Beltway in Prince George's that left several people with potentially life-threatening injuries.
The storms turned Earth Day festivities on the Mall into a sea of mud, disrupted a celebrated Annapolis croquet match and produced lightning that forced an airliner to make an emergency landing.
The National Weather Service confirmed last night that the damaging storms that tore through the Langley Park-Chillum area of Prince George's and the Waldorf-La Plata area of Charles were tornadoes, although relatively small ones.
Both apparently were produced between 2 and 3 p.m. by what the Weather Service said was the same parent storm, which swept north from Charles into Prince George's.
"It was ferocious. It was terrible," said Isabella Sampson, who lives in the Chillum area on Riggs Road, where the most damage was reported. "It was frightening. Very frightening."
Part of the roof of the George E. Peters Adventist School on Riggs Road was torn off by winds estimated at 100 mph by the Weather Service. An adjacent parking lot was filled with broken two-by-fours and heaps of pink insulation.
The Weather Service said the first of the tornadoes apparently touched down just south of Waldorf about 2:10 p.m. at Renner Road and Route 5.
From there, the tornado, with winds up to about 80 mph, about the minimum for a tornado, jabbed north on a track two miles long and 50 to 100 yards wide.
Doors popped off a storage shed. Roofing material was ripped from the tops of houses. Several large trees snapped, and some came down on houses and cars.
Shuaib Mitchell, who lives on Sweetbriar Place, called it "pretty violent." Part of a neighbor's roof was "torn apart," he said, windows were broken, and a tree fell on a car. He had seen strong storms, he said, but "not one like that."
The second tornado touched down about 2:35 p.m. at Sargent and Ray roads in Chillum. The tornado crossed woods and appeared to reach its peak intensity at the Peters school.
"I saw debris from the roof rotating," said John Crisman, a firefighter at the station across the street from the school.
Prince George's School Superintendent John E. Deasy said the public school system was looking for ways to temporarily accommodate students from the damaged school but had not decided where.
The chain-reaction crash occurred about 12:55 p.m. and shut down the outer loop of the Capital Beltway near the Ritchie Marlboro Road exit for several hours, Maryland State Police said.
Three of the most seriously injured were struck while on foot at the scene. One was the driver of an auto that had become disabled; the others were her parents, who had come to wait with her for a tow truck.
Witnesses told investigators that the crash was set off by a woman driving a Honda Accord at excessive speed and weaving in and out of traffic, Trooper 1st Class Michael Thompson said.
The Weather Service expects the sometimes-heavy rain to continue. But clearer skies and a high in the 70s is likely by Wednesday.
The Annapolis Cup, the annual croquet match between teams from St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy, was officially canceled because of the threat of lightning. But a St. John's spokeswoman said it went on -- unofficially.
The Earth Day Festival, a free concert on the Mall, was cut short.
"Holy Moses!" actor Chevy Chase marveled from the stage as it started pouring. Moments later, a festival official urged people to take refuge in the Smithsonian museums "for the next 20 or 30 minutes" because of the possibility of lightning. The show resumed, but producers later pulled the plug for good.
Lightning struck a Continental Airlines flight headed from Newark to Dulles International Airport about 10:30 a.m., forcing the jet to land at Baltimore Washington International Marshall Airport, a BWI spokesman said.
Staff writers J. Freedom du Lac, Martin Weil and Michael Laris contributed to this report.
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