Tornado

A dinnertime tornado, which apparently gained strength over the Potomac River, touched down outside Brunswick in southern Frederick County yesterday, tearing roofs apart, toppling trees, obliterating barns and chicken houses, buckling the walls of a home and downing utility wires. No injuries were reported The angry aftermath of Hurricane Ivan entered Maryland from Loudon County, Va., and passed through the outskirts of Brunswick, an old railroading town southwest of Frederick. "I was working at Superfresh when I saw the funnel.

The tornado that killed six people and wrecked much of La Plata last week has lost its ranking as Maryland's first F5 storm - the most powerful category. After a four-day inspection of damage along the storm's 68-mile track, a team of experts assembled by the National Weather Service gave it a final rating yesterday of 4 on the Fujita Tornado Damage Scale, with top winds of 260 mph in the La Plata area. A preliminary assessment of the storm's power, released the day after it struck, had rated it an F5, with winds of 261 mph or more.

The National Weather Service said yesterday it has not determined whether a tornado touched down in eastern Baltimore County during a severe thunderstorm Saturday afternoon.Several people reported seeing a funnel cloud at North Point Boulevard and Battle Grove Road about 1: 45 p.m. as the storm moved through the North Point area.The storm shattered windows at a Wendy's restaurant in the 4500 block of Battle Grove Road, leaving one person with minor cuts to the hand, according to a county Fire Department official.

The Prince George's fire department will hold a memorial service tonight for a volunteer firefighter who collapsed and died a few hours after a tornado touched down on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park. The service for Clarence Kreitzer, who was 78, will be held at 8 p.m. at the Robert E. Evans Funeral Home, 16000 Annapolis Road, in Bowie. Kreitzer, a member of the Bowie Volunteer Fire Department for 64 years, spent several hours on campus after the tornado hit, helping to provide lighting that allowed the cleanup to continue after dark.

A year after a tornado swept through Reisterstown, the management of the Chartley Park Center is looking back on the twister as a blessing in disguise.On Oct. 18, 1990, a tornado with winds up to 100 miles an hour cut through Reisterstown, downing power lines and trees, destroying homes and snapping utility poles like match sticks.Although the shopping center was damaged, the attention it received has improved the visibility of the 25-year old shopping center, said Steven Erlanger, a property manager for Continental Realty Corp.

The soggy and still-potent remnants of Hurricane Frances passed through Maryland yesterday, touching off what witnesses said looked like a tornado in Charles County and flooding streambeds in Allegany and Washington counties. The storm - classified as a tropical depression by the time it moved into the southern edge of the state late Tuesday - prompted forecasters to declare a tornado watch for much of Maryland after it had spawned several twisters in harder-hit North Carolina, said John Darnley, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sterling, Va. A watch indicates that conditions that are favorable for severe weather, and a warning indicates that it is likely or imminent.

Residents of central and northeastern Maryland yesterday cleaned up the debris left by a tornado that trapped people in their houses, ripped roofs off buildings, knocked out power to thousands of homes and uprooted trees.The twister caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage along a 2 1/2 -mile-wide path through Charles, Prince George's, Anne Arundel and Harford counties, authorities said. No one was injured."It picked this building up -- a carport -- and blew it about 1,000 yards into the woods," said Charles Vernon Jr., who owns a farm in the 8000 block of Quarterfield Road in Severn.

RIEGELWOOD, N.C. -- A tornado ripped through this Cape Fear River crossroads at dawn yesterday, killing at least seven residents and crushing more than 30 trailers and brick homes as residents were waking for jobs and school. More than 20 people were hospitalized, officials said, four of them children. A dark brown funnel cloud roared past the white double-wide trailer of Cissy Kennedy as she brushed her teeth at daybreak. She watched as the twister flattened two double-wide trailers and a single-width trailer next door, killing five of her neighbors but leaving her trailer untouched.

CHICAGO - For more than a decade, meteorology professor Paul Sirvatka has been teaching classes in weather forecasting and severe weather at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Ill. He also teaches storm chasing. That means three times during the April-through-June high season for storms and tornadoes, Sirvatka and 14 students plus an assistant and two drivers pack themselves, maps, cell phones, radios, a laptop, a GPS mapping device and some map software into two vans. The vans have so many radios and antennas, "we look like a porcupine," he said.

A month after a powerful tornado roared through two Gamber neighborhoods, plywood and plastic sheeting still cover dozens of homes and contractors' trucks seem to outnumber the homeowners' vehicles.But residents of Four Seasons and Mystic Kane Manor still count themselves lucky -- no one was killed in the three minutes of chaos the afternoon of July 19.The tornado, which damaged 67 homes, was one of the three worst in Carroll County history.Kathy Walther said she's thinking about throwing a party for the neighborhood to celebrate that residents came through the experience together.