Margaret Michael remembers the silence, then what sounded like an explosion.
She had just gotten home from work when she looked outside and beheld a scary sight: Trees, leaves and branches whipped wildly in the wind as rain poured down.
Michael, who is in her 60s, took the dogs downstairs. Her foot hit the second step when she heard the crash.
"I thought maybe it was lightning striking a transmitter," Michael said.
But it was the sound of a poplar tree limb crashing through her kitchen ceiling, sending water gushing inside, and two more gouging holes into her new backyard deck.
Across the street in Severna Park, the devastation from the tornado that touched down Thursday night was worse. A big tree fell through 48 Whittier Parkway, crushing its roof and tearing away a portion of the house's side.
The two were among 53 homes in Severna Park and Cape St. Claire significantly damaged by the rare twister, said Pam Jordan, a county land-use spokeswoman. Fifteen were deemed uninhabitable.
Between 1950 and 2000, 25 tornadoes have hit Anne Arundel County, said Jackie Hale, a spokeswoman for the National Weather Service's Baltimore-Washington forecast office. A total of 209 have hit Maryland between 1950 and 1998, she said.
The National Weather Service confirmed yesterday that the tornado touched down in Severna Park about 6:30 p.m. It traveled 2 miles and lifted in Pasadena about 6:40 p.m. At its height, the storm was 250 yards wide with winds of 90 mph, the weather service reported.
The weather service classified the tornado as a Category F1, applied when ground winds range from 73 mph to 112 mph. F1 ranks on the lower end of the tornado damage scale, which goes from F0 to F5.
The storm knocked out power to more than 38,000 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers, spokeswoman Linda Foy said. About 9:30 p.m. yesterday, BGE reported 626 customers in Anne Arundel County were without power.
The hardest-hit areas included Cattail Creek off the Magothy River, North Cape Arthur and Lower Magothy Beach, Rhonda Wardlaw, a spokeswoman for Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens.
Yesterday, under a sky that bore no trace of the storm, neighbors roamed the streets to snap photos of the damage, comfort each other and start cleaning up.
The sound of chain saws, cranes and trucks from tree-clearing companies served as constant background noise. BGE trucks dotted the street, with workers trying to repair the damage.
