Weak tornado or gustnado hit Sunderland

SUNDERLAND, Mass. (WWLP) - The National Weather Service is saying that it was either a weak tornado or a gustnado that touched down in Sunderland on Saturday evening.

“We started to see a brownish, grayish, greenish spinning object in the air. It was pulling shingles off the tobacco barn roof. We dipped back into the station and realized it was a tornado. At that point, we came back out and the entire tobacco barn behind me was laying in the middle of Route 47,” Officer Joshua Harris of the Sunderland Police Department said.

But it wasn't the damage to the barn that proved a tornado touched down. It was a rye field a few streets away that provided more evidence.

“Well, this rye field is ruined. It's all knocked down,” Cindy Hubbard said.

The damage pattern with the rye in one direction in one place, and in another direction right next to it, is an indication that a tornado may have touched down in the field.

“The grass had laid down in a particular pattern that’s indicative of a tornado or some kind of rotation, rather than a microburst that pushes everything outward. It's a very good place to show someone that particular site the pattern of the damage is the key,” Western Massachusetts Skywarn Coordinator Ray Weber said.

The National Weather Service is preliminarily classifying the tornado as an EF0, the weakest on the Enhanced Fujita Scale which is used to rank the intensity of tornadoes based on the damage that they cause.

It was either a weak tornado or a gustnado that caused the damage, a gustnado is a swirl of air that forms at the leading edge of a storm.