It began as an angry “isolated-cell” thunderstorm that the National Weather Service tracked as it crossed the Sound. The NWS issued a special marine warning at 7:29 a.m., upgraded it to severe thunderstorm warning at 8:08 and then to tornado watch at 8:28. A moment later, after the storm cell crossed Mattituck, a tornado was born.

An eyewitness said it began over Deep Hole Creek by the bay in Mattituck. “It looked like a funnel coming down the creek,” Kathleen Bitgood of Connecticut told her mother, Mary Drum of Mattituck.

A moment later, the twister ripped the roof off the Colligan house on Park Avenue Extension and flung it into the creek. Neighbors said Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Colligan were in a newer section of the house, which kept its roof, and weren't injured.

Then the funnel moved next door, to the Drum family cabin. Ms. Bitgood, her sister, Bridget Drum, and four children had finished breakfast and the kids had just left the table when the storm smashed through the windows. Only Bridget Drum was hit by the flying glass, suffering a leg gash that eventually required five stitches at Central Suffolk Hospital.

“We were very fortunate that nobody was hurt worse,” said Mary Drum. “They'll never forget it.”

The storm moved east, toward Kimogenor Point, New Suffolk. “It looked like a big wall coming at us,” said Jennie Watson, who was in the point's westernmost bungalow. “We didn't know what it was, but we knew it was bad.” She and her sister, Annie, and Jennie's daughter, Katie, 8, dove into a closet and listened.

Kimogenor Point battered

First came a train whistle sound, then the roar of the train itself. “The whole house started moving up and down,” said Ms. Watson, whose son, Alan, 9, was in a bungalow two doors down. The tornado passed right over the house between her and her son. “The storm went between us; that's the most frightening thing,” she said.

The house in the middle belongs to Bob and Suzanne Fox. “We were at the sliding doors looking at the bay and we thought it was a thunderstorm, like everyone else,” said Mr. Fox. “Then porch furniture started moving around, and water started coming up. Then something happened. I don't know what, but it was just frightening and violent. Everything just came at those windows straight on.”

They ran for cover, stowing son Tony, 14, in a closet and pulling mattresses over themselves. Then came the noise: “Breaking, rending, but mainly the roar,” said Mr. Fox.

The rending turned out to be the house's porch roof being ripped off. The breaking might have been a JY16 sailboat that the tornado pushed up the beach and slammed into the porch. Mr. Fox suspects that the boat's mast may have rammed through a bedroom window. Some of the porch ended up in the lagoon to the north. A piece broke off a column on the neighborhood's clubhouse 60 yards away. “It was an incredible event, just a mean force,” Mr. Fox said.

Still traveling east, the twister mangled the landmark Kimogenor windmill, a 1906 structure that had survived such notable blows as hurricanes Belle and Gloria and Bob, and even the great one of 1938. But Sunday's force wrenched its top to the east and left it hanging across power lines.

Waking to wall of water

Next stop, the Purcell house, where the commotion awoke 35-year-old Tom Purcell. He opened a front window and a piece of porch lattice flew through the screen, giving him “a rude slap in the face.”

Startled but uninjured, he looked at the porch and thought friends were playing a prank, moving furniture around. “I went out on the porch and there was a wall of water and lightning and debris all coming at me, almost like a tidal wave,” he said. “I turned around and ran and my shoes were sucked off me from behind.” He darted into the house and took cover in a fieldstone fireplace while the storm ripped away the porch roof and part of the main roof. He described the roar as “a cross between a freight train and a Waring blender.”

Later, one of his shoes was found 100 yards away, in a field behind the house. The other is still missing. “We're waiting for the other shoe to drop,” he said. He also said eight roof rafters had been broken, suggesting that the house was about to get “sucked right up” before the twister moved on.

But move on it did, topping and uprooting trees on a beeline for “downtown” New Suffolk, where it pushed about a dozen yachts off their cradles at Michael Raynor's 21st Century Marina. “It picked up a 20-ton boat and moved it six feet,” said Mr. Raynor. His own 30-foot Scarab speedboat got shoved off six jackstands, through a chain-link fence and across Main Street. “I've seen tidal surges do it, but I've never seen the wind pick boats up,” said Mr. Raynor. He estimates damage to the yard at “close to 100 grand.”

Willie Fisher was watching lightning through his window overlooking First Street when the boats were toppled. “I've seen buildings knocked down here for 20 years, but I've never seen anything like that,” he said.

Livery boats were flipped around like toys at Captain Marty's Fishing Station. Some eventually were located across the harbor off Nassau Point. “The visibility was zero, everything was flying,” said the station's owner, Phil Loria. He called the Coast Guard to find two boatloads of fishermen who'd already gone out. They were retrieved from the South Race (the other side of Robins Island), returning with a nice catch of fluke and porgies, angry about having their fishing interrupted. “They weren't aware we were having a problem,” said Mr. Loria.

Sweet Pea rebounds

Ed Cleversley had an offshore view of the twister's descent on New Suffolk. He'd overnighted aboard Sweet Pea, his 30-foot, 62-year-old wooden sailboat in New Suffolk Shipyard's mooring field, and woke up to the curious vision of a funnel cloud through the companionway. “It was heading toward Captain Marty's, and then I saw it pick up a tree,” he said. “I mean, a tree was swirling around in it. I thought to myself, this does not look good.”

Then the whirlwind veered toward the mooring field and the Sweet Pea was pushed over on her side. Water poured in a starboard porthole. Mr. Cleversley raced to close it, then checked the portside portholes, which were underwater. “Goodness gracious, I could see fish,” he said. “It was a pretty scary feeling.”

The boat lay on its side for what seemed “a fairly long time,” but was probably about five seconds, said Mr. Cleversley. Then it bobbed back upright.

No such luck for 15-year-old Bradley Griese of Manorville. An employee of New Suffolk Shipyard, he and the shipyard's manager, Craig Stika, overnighted in the harbor aboard the 22-foot Catalina sailboat that Bradley had bought and overhauled with his own money.

He watched helplessly as the funnel cloud “skipped over the shipyard and landed on the mooring field.” Once it touched the surface it became “a wall of water, rushing toward us, all black and filled with debris,” he said. “We heeled to port and went under within 30 seconds.”

They spent that 30 seconds grabbing life jackets from lockers, and then they were in the water, the boat sinking. “We were holding hands; we didn't want to get separated,” said Mr. Griese. An inflatable dingy was sucked up by the storm and then, amazingly, dropped down right next to the duo.

‘Dear life' no cliché

“We swam to a mooring ball and held on for dear life,” said Mr. Griese. “The funnel went right over us while we were in the water. We held on to that mooring as tight as possible. I've never been so happy to feel barnacles.”

And then the tornado passed, leaving only the mast of Bradley's boat breaking a surface littered with oars and shredded sails and life jackets. Eight of the 25 boats in the mooring field had sunk. One of them was Mr. Stika's own sailboat, Staccato.

As the seas calmed, the duo swam to an adjacent boat and climbed aboard. It wasn't until then that they realized how beat up they were. In the end, after being rescued, Mr. Stika went to the Eastern Long Island Hospital emergency room for a spinal x-ray and treatment of neck and leg injuries. “Something wrapped around me,” he said. “I don't remember untying myself. Next thing I knew I was in tremendous pain.” But the next day he was out salvaging sunken sailboats.

Nine-year-old Matthew Izzo had recently done a school project on tornadoes. That's what gave him the knowledge to tell his parents what was roaring across the harbor from New Suffolk and bearing down on their Vanston Road, Nassau Point, home.

“Funnels and streamers” were what his mother, Sheila Izzo, was seeing. “Mattie said: ‘It's a tornado; we have to go to the basement.' Pete [her husband] and I were mesmerized, shocked. Mattie had the sense. He knew we had to run.”

A dive for the game room

And run they did, down to the game room, as doors slammed so hard they wedged in the jambs. Air pressure plummeted, causing their ears to pop. Something - hailstones? debris? - pelted the house. Then it was gone.

Eight to 10 trees were down, and the patio, 80 feet up a bluff from the harbor, was covered with seaweed. Exterior walls were caked with mud; sand was on the game-room floor. Otherwise, the house was miraculously untouched. Other damage: Their son Danny's Whaler, with a brand new outboard not two weeks old, was hull-side up in the water.

“We had no time to be frightened,” Ms. Izzo said. “And we're so relieved that nothing happened to any of us, except our property looks like a tornado hit it.”

Tree damage was extensive on Nassau Point. “I was shutting the front door when something crashed like a bomb,” said Maggie Warner, whose house is near the end of Vanston Road. “We lost a whole lot of trees. Several were split by lightning.” The storm then scudded across Wunneweta Pond and seemed to fizzle out, she said. She commended the town highway department for prompt and diligent cleanup efforts.

In the end, less than 15 minutes after the tornado was born, that's what was left. A big mess. The Fox and Watson families had almost filled a 30-yard dumpster with porch shrapnel by Monday afternoon.

And by then the National Weather Service had sent experts in. Based on damage levels, they labeled the tornado an F2 on the Fujita scale, F0 being the least destructive and F5 being the most. F2s pack winds of 113 to 155 miles per hour.

“We were very lucky,” said Southold Police Lieutenant Ty Cochran. If the tornado had stayed closer to the ground, instead of hovering in the air over much of its path, “we would have been a lot more torn up,” he said.

Luck's the word

More luck: As ancient trees were toppled on Jackson Street in New Suffolk, a primary power line came down with them. A touch would have been fatal. Lt. Cochran said the Long Island Power Authority “had to shut the whole area down” for repairs. (See separate story.)

Roads all around New Suffolk and Nassau Point were blocked by timber, and roads and buildings all over the fork were flooded in the torrential rains that followed the tornado. “It was an intense few hours,” said the lieutenant. “There was similar damage to a hurricane, but it was confined - easier for emergency people to deal with. Cutchogue [Fire Department] had help from Mattituck, Southold and Greenport. If it's a hurricane, Cutchogue's on its own; they'd have their own problems to deal with.”

Taking all that into account, plus a number of homes hit by lightning, Lt. Cochran called the two injuries amazing. “Very, very lucky,” he repeated.

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