© BRETT DZADIKA tornado rips through the parking lot of a Home Depot on Route 9 in Howell, NJ on Saturday morning.
Those bursts of high-speed winds that knocked over trees were as bad as you thought. In fact, two of them were actually tornadoes.
Two tornadoes and a 75-mph microburst were in New Jersey this week, the National Weather Service has confirmed. Both left destruction in their paths.
The weather service said the first tornado was the one seen in the now widely circulated video taken by Brett M. Dzadik at a Home Depot in Howell. That tornado touched down at 7:21 a.m., had wind speeds of up to 75 mph and a path of about 40 yards wide for about a half-mile, the service said.
The second tornado touched down at 7:27 a.m. and also had maximum winds of 75 mph, the weather service said. That tornado caused the damage seen at Oak Glen Park, also in Howell, and traveled about three-tenths of a mile with a path about 25 yards wide, the service said.
Comment: On average the Garden State has two tornadoes annually in the past 20 years, said Sarah Johnson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Mt. Holly office.