‘Is this real?’: Mattapoisett residents describe EF-1 tornado

MATTAPOISETT, Mass. (WLNE) — The National Weather Service identified two tornadoes that touched down in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

An EF-1 tornado tore through several neighborhoods, with winds reported up to 95 miles per hour in Mattapoisett. The NWS reported the tornado touched down around 11:30 Tuesday morning, traveling a mile across the ground and nearly three football fields wide.

The second tornado, an EF-0, touched down in Barnstable closer to noon with 80 mile per hour winds.

An ABC 6 News crew was on Eldorado Drive in Mattapoisett as crews removed debris after the EF-1 tornado uprooted trees and residential properties.

Most of the damage was to trees, but during the tornado’s peak, homeowners feared the worst.

“It’s the worst feeling. All you’re thinking about is, is the house OK, are the pets OK, are our neighbors OK, so thank God that our family was not here,” resident Nicholas Bettencourt told ABC 6.

“It’s devastating, it’s heart-wrenching, and our neighbors have been great. They’re FaceTiming, trying to show us the damage so we can navigate how to work together to get through this,” Bettencourt added.

Bettencourt told ABC 6 that he was coming back from work when the news came in, but Marcia Dupont, who lives on the corner of Eldorado Drive, saw the whole thing happen.

She described to ABC 6 how she was nearly frozen in shock.

“The trees started really, like, going a mile a minute. Like, really, really fast. And I said ‘Oh geez, this is not normal, this is not normal, you’ve got to go to the basement.’ But you want to stand there, and you want to see what’s happening, because this is not normal. And you want to explain to people what you saw,’” Dupont said.

Most of the homeowners told ABC 6 that they didn’t believe the warning was real, but now they won’t make that mistake again.

“You need to listen to that message because in today’s day, these weird environmental things are happening anywhere,” Dupont said.

“I was close to it, but I was still wondering, ‘Is this real?’ So, it’s real. It happened in Mattapoisett,’” Dupont added.

The NWS said there were no reported injuries from either tornado.