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Spotsylvania farm ripped by suspected tornado while twister reports cause confusion in Stafford. Date published: 5/13/2006
By RUSTY DENNEN Stafford County fire and rescue workers converged on Holly Corner Road south of U.S. 17 on Thursday evening expecting to find devastation wrought by a tornado. When they arrived--based on a tornado warning issued by the National Weather Service office in Sterling--they found wind and rain, but no damage in sight. Meanwhile, what may have been a tornado was pummeling Oakley Farm near Todds Tavern in Spotsylvania County at around the same time. Chris Strong, a meteorologist in Sterling, said yesterday that forecasters that evening had been monitoring the two large thunderstorms. The first warning for severe weather in Spotsylvania was issued at about 5:25 p.m. and damage reports soon followed. A similar warning was issued in Stafford at 5:49 p.m. Then at 6:12, the weather service erroneously reported that a tornado had touched down along Holly Corner Road. The warning should have been issued for Todds Tavern, where a trained volunteer weather spotter reported that a tornado had touched down. The mix-up caused some anxiety in Stafford, where emergency workers scoured Holly Corner Road, just west of the University of Mary Washington's College of Graduate and Professional Studies. "We were out in force," Roger Sutherland, Stafford County's assistant fire chief, said yesterday. "They [forecasters] weren't far off the money. It was a pretty good storm," he said, but there was obviously no tornado. Strong said forecasters evidently got the two storms confused; both had the characteristic rotation associated with tornadoes. He said the erroneous report was corrected later that evening. Around 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Anne Beals, an owner of Oakley Farm, was driving home to Spotsylvania from Fredericksburg. Under the dark and threatening sky, "I could see something was going on," Beals said yesterday. As she pulled up the cedar-lined drive, she saw trees snapped off halfway up their trunks, metal sheets ripped from a machine shed roof, and a large oak had been toppled just a few feet from the family home.
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