A tornado with maximum winds of 110 mph touched down in Federal Hill on Friday and blew east before dissipating in Dundalk, meteorologists with the National Weather Service have determined.

Survey crews issued a preliminary storm report Saturday evening, classifying the tornado as an EF-1 — the second-lowest rating — and concluding the tornado cut an eastward path 75 yards wide and almost six miles long.

National Weather Service meteorologists had traveled to Baltimore on Saturday to survey the damage before making the determination. Further information about the storm is expected to be released in the days ahead.

Fierce winds and heavy rains battered neighborhoods such as Canton, Catonsville and Dundalk during the Friday evening storm. The National Weather Service briefly put the city and surrounding areas under a tornado warning until 6:15 p.m.

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The storm winds uprooted big trees at Canton Waterfront Park, flipped tractor-trailers at the eastern edge of the city near Dundalk and peeled off part of the roof at the Merritt Clubs Canton gym. Merritt emailed members Saturday morning to say the Canton gym was closed while they inspect the damage.

In Canton, the Merritt athletic club in Canton sustained severe damage, including to its roof, after a brief but powerful storm passed through Baltimore on Friday, May 16, 2025.
In Canton, the Merritt athletic club sustained severe damage, including to its roof, after a brief but powerful storm passed through Baltimore on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Baltimore Banner)

“The sky turned green. Our doors burst open. We saw a bunch of things flying in the sky,” Austin Insisienmay, who works at a Canton nail salon, told The Banner on Friday. “We had to lock the doors because the wind was really strong.”

WBAL-TV reported that city inspectors had condemned the gym building by late Friday. The station’s meteorologist, Tony Pann, shared a bystander’s photo that showed a funnel-shaped cloud over Catonsville.

No injuries have been reported.

Nearly 700 outages across Maryland left roughly 9,900 customers without power on Saturday evening, according to the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company outage map. BGE expects to restore service for the “vast majority” of customers by the end of Sunday, but some customers will be without power into Monday.

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The storm clouds had passed by Friday night, and Saturday afternoon was forecast to be sunny and clear for the 150th Preakness Stakes, with high temperatures in the 80s.

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify how many power outages BGE was reporting.