The National Weather Service office in Gray has confirmed the funnel cloud that landed in the Oxford Counthy town of Denmark Tuesday morning was in fact a tornado, but hardly a serious enough event to warrant any real concern. 

“It was just a little temporary spin-up,” said Donny Dumont, a warning coordinator meteorologist for the service. “Literally, the thing was on the ground for about 15 seconds, hit a barn and knocked a few shingles off.” 

A report from the NWS indicated the funnel cloud landed at 11:20 a.m. Tuesday. 

“Minor tree damage was reported along with damage to sheds and the roof of a barn,” the NWS wrote in its report. 

Dumont said windspeeds of the cloud never got higher than an estimated 55 mph, classifying the “tornado” as being less than “0” on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which is used to measure the severity of tornadoes. An EF-0 tornado has winds of 65-85 mph, according to the NWS website. 

The NWS initially reported it as a “landspout,” which technically forms slightly differently than a tornado. Dumont said landspouts are more closely related to “dust devils,” or brief rotating clouds that dissipate fairly quickly. They don’t even need to occur during a related weather event like the storm that struck the state with torrential rain and winds earlier this week, he said. 

“It’s like a super-weak tornado,” he said. “I’d say they’re pretty common.” 

But Dumont said Tuesday’s event officially counts as a tornado. Spectrum News Meteorologist Justin Gehrts said Maine has an average of two tornadoes per year, but has had very few in recent years.  

From 2018 to 2022, he said, there have only been two, one being an EF-1 tornado on Aug. 12, 2019, between Springfield and Topsfield. 

“The last known one was on July 11, 2020, incidentally, also near Denmark,” Gehrts said. That one was an EF-0 cloud, he said.