Five tornadoes touched down in four towns in central Massachusetts during Saturday's storm, the National Weather Service has confirmed.

A team of field inspectors from the agency surveyed damage Monday and found that "brief" EF1 tornadoes landed in Holden, Paxton, Berlin and Stow. EF1 tornadoes have winds in the range of 86 to 110 miles per hour. 

These are the first tornadoes confirmed in New England in 2025. Massachusetts averages two tornadoes a year. These are the most in the state since June 2011.

"There were 5 separate tornado touchdowns across these areas," the National Weather Service said in its final briefing Tuesday, noting that two were in Paxton.

The agency said the first twister was on Richards Avenue in Paxton at 4:02 p.m. and it lasted for a minute. A second tornado was confirmed on South Road at 4:06 p.m. that also lasted just one minute.

In Holden, the site of the first confirmed tornado on radar Saturday, the weather service said a tornado briefly touched down over Willow Brook Road at 4:08 p.m.

Trees uprooted in Holden

Several large trees in yards along South Road in Holden were pulled out of the ground by the storm. Some of them were hundreds of years old.

"It'll change the landscape forever here," said homeowner Janna Goodnow in Holden. "It's like a movie scene, you don't expect to see trees uprooted like that."

Don Jacobs said he got a tornado warning on his phone in Holden. 

"The cellphone tells you this day and age to run to your basement, and of course I didn't move," said Jacobs, who had tree damage at his home. "Good news is it happens so fast that you don't have time to get scared." 

"By the time we looked out of the window, we could see all of the leaves and branches going around in a circle, and then we heard a big thud," said Jacobs, talking about the huge tree that uprooted in his front lawn. "Ironically, as it so happens, we were about to have our lawn reseeded literally tomorrow, and we called to cancel that." 

"You look at the density of all of the trees, and it's amazing that there isn't more house damage," said Holden resident Chris Quinn.

Holden is in Worcester County, 55 miles west of Boston. 

A few minutes later, at 4:25 p.m. Saturday, a tornado touched down west of Barnes Hill Road in Berlin with an estimated peak wind of 104 miles per hour as it crossed Derby Road and West Street.

Tornado number five was reported in Stow at 4:30 p.m. and lasted about four minutes.

The National Weather Service team also surveyed storm damage Monday in Otis and Blandford in western Massachusetts but found no evidence of tornadoes there.