Storm Smacks Brentwood, Mt. Rainier

Nelly Romero was in the kitchen making lunch for her three young children yesterday when a tree crashed through the roof of her Brentwood home in Prince George's County.

She grabbed the kids from the living room and sought refuge in the family's minivan from the twisting, gray funnel cloud that witnesses described as a tornado.

"When I saw the tree, I just thought 'save my kids,' " said Romero, 30.

Heavy wind swept through the northern part of the District and portions of Montgomery and Prince George's counties yesterday afternoon, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a severe thunderstorm warning as rush hour began.

At 9:15 p.m., as severe thunderstorms pounded Southern Maryland, a 32-year-old Charles County man was struck by lightning while attaching a trailer to his pickup truck in Hughesville, said Captain Rob Cleaveland of the Charles County Sheriff's Office. The man, who police did not identify, was listed in critical condition at Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton, he said.

Downed power lines closed roads and caused sporadic outages.

The Romero family's rented home in the 3400 block of Allison Street, which they were forced to leave, was at the center of a 10-square-block area in Brentwood and Mount Rainier hit by the severe weather, said Mark Brady, spokesman for the Prince George's County Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department.

There were reports of hail the size of a penny two miles northwest of Bethesda in Montgomery County about 1:30 p.m., the weather service said.

Near the District's Lamond Riggs neighborhood in Northeast, at Kansas Street and Blair Road, Morris Davis Jr., 26, reported seeing a 30-foot-long tin roof pull away from a building and crash onto the street. He said he also saw two squirrels picked up by the wind, flying in the air.

"The insulation started lifting off the roof and twirling in the air," he said. "It looked like the top part of a funnel in the clouds with a trail of debris behind it."

Brian LaSorsa, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said there was no confirmation that the reported twisting cloud was a tornado.

"As we evaluate the damage, we may go out and do a storm survey," he said.