ROSCOE AND CALLICOON CENTER — Walking slowly through the front door of his home high in the hills atop Callicoon Center, Dick Riseling tried to piece together the moments of the past 24 hours.

First came a warning that a tornado was coming, he recalled. Some 15 minutes later, the funnel cloud had arrived at Apple Pond Farm and Renewable Energy Education Center, ripping apart the farm’s main barn, tearing the frames of countless sheds and smaller structures built to house animals, toppling the farm’s wind turbine and pulling the rootballs of 100-year-old pine trees from the ground.  

“It stayed around for 3 minutes,” Riseling estimated. 

Those three minutes were all it needed to drastically reshape the landscape of a property that began as a farm in the 1800s and was taken over by Riseling and wife Sonja Hedlund in the 1970s. The couple and a family staying in their home rushed to the basement when they heard the winds, and Hedlund said they emerged when they settled to find no power, no water, and devastation everywhere they looked. 

Though their house withstood the storm and their animals managed too, the couple were trapped at home with trees and wires completely blocking the driveway. 

And the storm was only just beginning its twisting path through the northwestern section of the county. 

The storm began showing signs of rotation over Pike County, Pa, according to Mike Hardiman, one of two National Weather Center meteorologists who visited the county Sunday to survey the damage.

From there it crossed into Sullivan County and prompted two successive tornado warnings to residents, and formed into what Hartiman and colleague Bryan Greenblatt confirmed was a tornado that ranged in power from an EF-1 to an EF-2. 

Based on a scale of 0 to 5, EF-1 tornadoes are estimated to have wind speeds of up to 110 mph, while EF-2 tornado winds top 135 mph. 

Touchdown in Callicoon Center left devastation at Apple Pond and across Hahn Road at the Chumley residence, left driveways and roads impassable and tore sections of roof off homes as it made its way through the northwest section of the Town of Callicoon. On Dutch Hill Road, Valorie Rittendale felt her whole house shake as the tornado ripped the roof from neighbor Virginia Grant’s new home and deposited sections on the Rittendale’s lawn. 

“Who sees this in Roscoe,” Rittendale asked, shaking her head as she offered up bottles of water to Town of Callicoon Highway Superintendent Mike Hahn and members of his crew who were on hand to help clear the road while NYSEG workers removed downed lines from the roadway.

Dutch Hill Road was one of many left impassable by the storm, Hahn said, although damage to the town’s infrastructure was limited to downed trees and powerlines, the roads themselves escaping unscathed. 

By Sunday morning, Dutch Hill Road was the only roadway left closed in the Town of Rockland, where the tornado moved from Gulf Road across the Willowemoc into town. 

“It sounded like a freight train,” Roscoe Rockland Fireman Matt Kunze said of its arrival. “I saw what looked like a funnel starting. I watched it form and it sucked back in, it formed and sucked back in. Then my whole truck moved.” 

Fellow Roscoe resident Kevin Feeney was watching from the back porch of friend Anthony Teipelki’s home on Gulf Road when he saw the sky turn black. 

Turning to his friend’s son and daughter, Feeney told them to run for the basement.

“By the time we got in the door and to the basement, it was done,” the Roscoe resident said. 

In just minutes, a tornado had ripped through Roscoe, tearing much of the roof from the Teipelki’s home on Gulf Road, sending trees crashing through the rear window of a New York State Police cruiser parked beside the courthouse, and carrying wires, trees, and bits of siding, gutters and parts of rooftops along with it. 

Out of town for his wife’s birthday, Teipelki rushed home to find water rushing into his house from above as heavy rains continued to hammer the area. 

“The roof we can fix easy, but the water running down the walls …” he trailed off. “I was praying, please let it stop raining.”

That rain kept up much of the night as Town of Callicoon and Town of Rockland highway crews, NYSEG, volunteer fire crews and other emergency service workers worked through the night to clear roadways and ensure residents were OK. 

“Everybody is OK, that’s the main thing,” Roscoe Rockland Fire Chief Guy Baker said.