Pictured is damage to a barn on Barnes Road in the Mayville area. Photo by Mike Mattson

The National Weather Service in Buffalo confirmed that a tornado touched down in the town of Portland Thursday afternoon, causing heavy damage to the area in addition to widespread high winds and rain seen throughout Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Erie counties.

“The possible tornado in Chautauqua County has been confirmed as a tornado,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Liz Jurkowski said. “We had very hot and humid conditions. Then, additionally, the major factor, what made everything severe, was our winds over the area. What we had was a very good wind-shear, which is a change of wind speed and direction with height. So that is what made some of the nice little showers more severe and into something serious. Overall we had quite a few trees down across the area, we’ve had flooding across the area. We got damage reports with the possibility of it being a tornado, we then sent a storm survey team and they have surveyed the area, the damage, and have come to the conclusion that it was a tornado.”

Reports on social media indicated that severe weather damage occurred in the area of Barnes Road north of Mayville. While severe weather also occurred throughout Western New York on Thursday, a tornado has only been confirmed in Portland.

Mayville resident Mike Mattson heard reports of a funnel cloud in the area, and drove north to his sister’s property on Barnes Road to take photographs at 5 p.m.

“I just heard from my sister that a tornado touched down over there, so I went over to take pictures,” Mattson said. “The weather was doing nothing when I went over there, but a lot of people from the community were already there helping them out.”