A confirmed EF-1 tornado tore through Atlantic Beach, Nassau County on the evening of August 20, destroying 50 cabanas at the Sun and Surf Beach Club while 100 guests were inside — and it struck in the same three-minute window that flash flood warnings were cascading across all five New York City boroughs, the BQE and LIE were closing during peak commute hours, and LaGuardia Airport was temporarily shutting its gates. No serious injuries were reported from the tornado, but the storm left New York’s multi-layered transportation network in effective paralysis for hours, demonstrated that NYC’s stormwater system reliably floods whenever a Moderate Risk storm arrives, and confirmed that the region’s summer of extreme weather had found a new chapter.
What the National Weather Service Confirmed: An EF-1 Tornado at Atlantic Beach
The National Weather Service’s New York office issued its damage survey at 6:55 p.m. ET on August 21, the day after the storm. The EF-1 tornado — rated at peak winds of 97 mph (156 km/h) — touched down on the far western end of Atlantic Beach at 6:47 p.m. Thursday and dissipated just three minutes later, at 6:50 p.m., cutting a path approximately 0.36 miles (0.58 km) long and 100 yards (91 m) wide.
The NWS survey found that the tornado began as an eastward-moving waterspout that paralleled the far southeastern beachfront of the Rockaways before crossing the entrance to East Rockaway Inlet and coming ashore near the Sun and Surf Beach Club’s parking lot. Once onshore, it demolished a 30-yard length of sand fencing, shattered the rear and north-facing windows of nearly 30 cars, and then tore through the beach club itself — inflicting complete roof damage and partial wall damage on 25 to 30 bungalows and causing additional lighter damage up to 200 feet away from the primary path. The greatest winds, estimated at 85 to 97 mph (137 to 156 km/h), concentrated on the south and west sides of the easternmost three rows of bungalows.
It was the first confirmed tornado in Nassau County since 2021…