Rotterdam resident saw a funnel cloud (STORM)

PHOTOGRAPHER: Steven Cook

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Tom Ryan could see the storm coming, his wife Michelle, too.

Michelle Ryan went to the cellar of their Duanesburg Road home, near Five Corners; she was too petrified to stay upstairs.

Tom Ryan stayed upstairs and saw the funnel cloud.

“It came right through here, about 20-30 feet off the ground,” Tom Ryan said this morning as he took a break from cleanup work. “It was a tornado, but it did not touch the ground.”

National Weather Service officials are out today surveying damage to determine exactly what came through the area in Wednesday night’s storm.

The end result, though, was all too clear: Downed trees, trees into houses and power lines and power out to many.

At the Ryans’, a section of a line of trees was down. Another branch landed on a car. But their house was fine.

“Everybody’s fine, thank God,” Michelle Ryan said.

Next door, Tony Campoli and his grandson Anthony were shoring up some small trees. The grandfather’s big tree, at a home he had lived at for 50 years, lay on its side.

“There’s so much damage around here, it’s unbelievable,” the grandfather said.

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