Rhode Island sighting confirmed as tornado

(Nicholas Caisse)

Barrington, R.I., firefighter Nicholas Caisse caught this picture of the funnel cloud Wednesday.

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

The National Weather Service said today that a funnel cloud witnessed by people Wednesday afternoon on Narragansett Bay was a tornado.

The forecasters said a team had determined that the tornado began at about 4 p.m. just off Rumstick Point in Barrington, R.I., had moved onto land in Warren, R.I., then moved into the Ocean Grove section of Swansea, Mass.

The tornado's path was 4.2 miles long and only 40 yards wide, the weather service said in a statement. No injuries were reported. The majority of the damage was to trees, some of which fell onto power lines and houses.

The confirmation by the weather service comes the same day as another powerful storm ripped through southeastern New Hampshire, causing one fatality and raising questions about whether it was a tornado.

The weather service said witnesses to the Rhode Island tornado said they had seen funnel clouds and swirling debris, and heard an intense roaring. It estimated that the tornado's winds had reached speeds of 65 to 75 miles per hour with one stretch where it reached 90 miles per hour.

Rosalie Lindamood, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla., was visiting her daughter in Barrington when the skies began to darken.

"I was shutting the windows because it was getting real stormy," she said. "I happened to look out and I saw that tail going right across. ... "That's the first time I ever saw anything like that, and Jacksonville has a lot of bad weather."

Nicholas Caisse, 23, a Barrington firefighter who has recently taken up photography as a hobby, said he went down to the town beach to try to get some pictures of the sky and maybe some lightning.

"I noticed some people looking out onto the bay and saw it and just started taking pictures," he said.

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