Four Tornadoes Touch Down in Upstate New York, Killing 1

Towns across upstate New York were reeling on Wednesday after four tornadoes touched down Tuesday night, destroying buildings and killing at least one person, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Wednesday.

The worst of the damage was centered in Rome, N.Y., a city of 32,000 less than 50 miles east of Syracuse. Twenty-two buildings, not including houses, sustained structural damage, Ms. Hochul said, and four were entirely destroyed. Two churches lost their steeples, one of which was among the oldest buildings in town.

The governor announced she had deployed 50 members of the National Guard to help clean up the mess.

“This is the worst event to hit the city of Rome,” Ms. Hochul said.

In Canastota, a village 25 miles west of Rome, Robert Popple, 82, left his house to check on a vintage car he had parked out front, Ms. Hochul said, when he was “swept away.” He was found dead after the storm had passed, the village said in a statement.

“Let’s just recognize this 82-year-old, who just was out there living life as one does, and was unexpectedly swept from us,” Ms. Hochul said.

The storms came as New York State faces a sustained period of extreme weather that included heat waves with temperatures in the high 90s, as well as storm systems that have produced heavy rains and high winds. Last week, there were 42 tornado warnings across the state, Ms. Hochul said.

Michael Kistner, the lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Binghamton, N.Y., said that the state gets “a couple” of tornadoes a year on average. But given the vast stretches of rural land across the state, they rarely cause this much damage.

“A lot of times they’ll touch down in the middle of a forest, or somewhere else,” he said. “To have it actually touch down in a city or town, an urban location, is very rare.”

Once a tornado watch becomes a warning, Mr. Kistner said, the threat is imminent and people should take immediate shelter within an internal room in their homes on the lowest floor. It is best to have a plan in place, he said, to avoid having to make important choices on the fly.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a social media post that the storms that ravaged upstate New York had created “a scene out of Twister,” referring to the storm-chasing movie.

He and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a fellow New York Democrat, called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be ready to respond to the affected areas. For the agency to intervene, public damage must exceed $37 million.

Their statement noted that the most recent spate of storms followed another bad crop of thunderstorms just last week that included a tornado in Erie County.

“These extreme weather events are no longer the abnormal,” Ms. Hochul said. “They are the new normal.”