Cleanup after Goshen tornado continues

 Goshen — Art and Maureen Weyrauch were planning to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on Friday.

They were sitting in the sunroom at the back of their Hasbrouck Road home, when dark clouds and thunder began rolling toward them. Fast and twisting.

The cracks of lightning startled Maureen so much that she bolted for the basement without even bothering to pick up her white loafers from in front of the recliner.

Art watched in amazement as fierce winds began tearing apart the limbs of a 75-year-old walnut tree about 20 yards from the house. Leaves and debris slammed into the house.

Art said he felt as if the air was trying to suck him out of the house.

Then the glass shattered in the sunroom skylight and covered his wife's loafers.

No injuries reported

National Weather Service officials confirmed Saturday that an EF-1, a relatively weak tornado on the Fujita scale, touched down about 5 p.m. Friday. It left a trail of destruction along a 2.1-mile stretch of the town.

Orange County Emergency Services Commissioner Walter Koury said Sunday that his agency had no reports of injuries.

Orange and Rockland Utilities reported that all but a handful of the 3,000 southern Orange County customers deprived of electricity from the storm had power restored by Sunday.

80-foot tree snapped off

Residents said the tornado took a path from Sarah Wells Trail southward toward Coleman, Craigville, Hasbrouck, Knoell and Ridge roads before heading southeast.

Those directly in its path talked of a funnel cloud acting like both a pogo stick and a freight train.

"It hits, lifts, goes a few hundreds yards and hits again," said Dick Roberts. At his Sarah Wells Trail home, the tornado uprooted a 60-foot tree.

"You could see the whole swirl action," said Kevin Alders, 18, who was driving in a car with his brother up a hill on Hasbrouck Road when they saw the tornado in front of them.

The worst-hit homes appeared to be on Hasbrouck Road. On Sunday, John Bienskie of Bienskie Excavating and Tree Service was clearing uprooted trees at the home of Peggy von Pentz, 86.

She was in the house when the tornado lifted, twisted and snapped off an 80-foot Norwegian spruce, which ended up leaning against the house. The farmhouse — it's more than a century old — remained relatively unscathed.

At the Weyrauchs' house across the street from von Pentz, glass was strewn across the back patio. Above the windows of the sunroom, a piece of tree had impaled itself in the metal gutter.

Nancy Weyrauch — one of the couple's five grandchildren — along with Nancy's niece, dug out some pale-toned stockings and ruby-red slippers and arranged them — like a scene out of

"The Wizard of Oz" — beneath a pile of tree debris.

"We were like, 'We might as well make a joke out of it,'" Nancy said.