Downed tree at 12 Rosewood Avenue, North Amityville. Tree broke through roof. The family was at home at the time, but no injuries were reported. Photo by Joe Turner. A twister struck the Massapequa and Amityville areas last week, arriving after an introduction by a blackened sky and pellets of hail that rained down on the area. By 11:57 a.m., on Friday, Aug. 25, the National Weather Service reported that the tornado struck in the area of County Line Road, heading east from Clocks Boulevard to Route 110, Amityville, with winds upwards of 70 miles an hour.

"I was shopping at T. J. Max when the skies became so dark it looked like night," said one resident. "Then the winds and thunder and lightning came with such a force that I thought I felt the roof of the bulding rumbling. And finally the water, which was knee deep in the parking lot."

"The driving rain, the wind and the hail felt like it would push over my car," said Katelynn Manton of Melrose Avenue, Massapequa, a student at Binghamton University. "The water in my driveway was above my ankles. There were piles of hail all over the place."

Tree downed on County Line Road, Massapequa, fell on a new truck and also damaged a boat and a roof on a home there. Photo by Joe Turner. "I didn't see it, but it must have been terrifying," said Billy Manton, a student who went through the neighborhood to see the damage and do what he could to help.

Nassau County and Amityville police lines were swamped with calls as residents reported trees down and power outages.

Police, firefighters and highway crews rushed to the scene, either cutting and removing trees that had been uprooted and were blocking roads, or setting up flares and cordoning off areas where power lines were down and dangerous. In addition, drains, overburdened by the deluge of water that had fallen within such a short period of time, had to be cleared.

"LIPA responded pretty fast," said Lt. Donald Dobby of the Amityville Police Department, whose department called in additional officers to respond to the calls for assistance. Neither Amityville nor Nassau reported any injuries or deaths as a result of the storm, however.

"It was raining, then there was a downpour," said Jessica and Michael Smith of Melrose Avenue. "First there were pea-sized hail and then quarter-sized hail and our deck and lawn furniture were covered. There was also lightning everywhere."

The Smiths went to their basement just as the power went out with rain, they said, coming in horizontally through their front door.

One Amityville officer was able to tape the fast moving twister as it touched down and some of that footage was used by the national media as the story

(Continued on page 3) became the news of the day.

With Nassau County busy working to clear and secure roads on the south side of Sunrise Highway where large trees were uprooted and power lines were down, the Amityville Police closed off County Line Road as well as other Village streets. By 5 p.m., things were almost back to normal.

"Everyone did a great job," said Dobby. It (the twister) moved in quickly and was gone. By Saturday, it seemed almost as if nothing had happened." At the scene was Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto who called the event "very unusual".

"This storm was particularly violent and went southeast from the Sunrise Mall toward the water," he said. "There is some evidence of a tornado and a lot of damage."

Approximately 30 trees were reported down in the Massapequa area. And it seemed that within only a few hours, they were cut down and cleared off the road. By 5 p.m., traffic was back to normal and the storm was just a memory and a story for many to tell.