MARYDEL, Del. - The sound of leaf blowers filled the air along Mahan Corner Road Friday morning in Marydel.
It was time to clean up after an intense storm made folks think a tornado rolled through town.
"I haven't seen nothing like it and I've lived here my whole life," said Marydel neighbor Andrew Edington. "Like I said it was pretty intense and it snapped the trees like they were toothpicks. It was fierce. I thought it was a tornado when it came in."
The storm came ashore on Delmarva in Talbot County just after sunset Thursday evening, feeding on abundant hot and humid air.
It arrived in Marydel just before 10 p.m. - seemingly with little notice.
"The first thing I saw was the flash of lightning. And then it just started coming down," Edington said. "It started pouring, and then the wind started coming in. It was so hard that you couldn't push in the front door, you couldn't even open the front door."
Video taken from more than 30 miles away Thursday night in Delmar, shows the storm over Talbot County, with intense lightning visible that is the hallmark of a rapidly growing storm.
Chopper 16 overflew Marydel, and saw half-foot wide tree limbs snapped as if they were mere twigs.
Last night, neighbor Diane Metsch returned from an evening outing to a mess in her yard.
"I came out and there was branches, tree limbs down, and I also had a power line that had ripped off from the house, it was laying on the ground," Metsch recounted.
According to Edington, the Delaware Emergency Management Agency reached out to neighbors to plan a visit to survey the damage from the Marydel Maelstrom.
As the heat wave breaks over Delmarva this weekend, there are daily chances of scattered storms, some of which could be strong to severe, so all will need to remain weather aware.
