Tornado briefly sweeps into Buffalo, damaging buildings and scattering tree limbs

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A small tornado took Buffalo by surprise Monday, damaging buildings, flipping cars and sending debris swirling over downtown.

A spiraling column was caught on multiple videos shortly before 1 p.m. One video showed the cell appearing to move from Lake Erie into the city, which sits on the lake's shore, sending pieces of roofing flying before quickly dissipating. The National Weather Service determined the tornado began at the shore near where the lake flows into the Niagara River and traveled a 1.4-mile (2.25-kilometer) path.

“It surprised everyone,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a news conference.

In the aftermath, photos showed a car on its roof in a parking lot, street signs bent and fallen tree limbs across roads and sidewalks.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

A weather service statement said the tornado was preliminarily rated as an EF-1 with a maximum estimated wind speed of 90 mph (145 kph) based on the damage to trees, "the moving of several dozen rooftop air conditioning units, and the loss of roofing material on a couple of multi-level or multi-family units.”

Poloncarz said a nursing facility damaged in the storm was assessing whether to move patients. A school sustained damage to some windows, several traffic lights were knocked offline and some cars were overturned, Mayor Byron Brown said.

It is the third tornado reported in Erie County in a month, Poloncarz said. Tornados were confirmed in the towns of Eden and West Falls on July 10. Two additional tornadoes were reported in neighboring Genesee County the same day.

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This story has been corrected to show that the tornado was spotted around 1 p.m., not 2 p.m.