Tornadoes And Floods End In East, Start In West

Areal view of homes damaged by the tornado
in Revere, Mass. on Monday.  

I'm sure you all saw on the news that strange tornado that hit Revere, Mass. on Monday morning.  

One thing I'm extremely surprised and pleased about: There were no serious injuries in Revere, despite the fact its 120 mph winds roared through a heavily populated area with many houses and businesses, a main thoroughfare with lots of traffic, pedestrians and people out and about at around 9 in the morning.

The Boston Globe has a series of amazing photos from the damage in Revere. Again, shocking nobody was badly hurt.

Here's some video of the storm, this being a surveillance camera shot at Revere High School. More about the nation's storminess below the video:



Up here in Vermont during Monday, there were no severe thunderstorms, just drenching rains and some local flash floods.

The worst of the flash flooding happened around Chester and Andover, Vermont, where at least one house was extensively damaged or destroyed, some others likely got water in their basements, and some roads were closed for a time.

It seems to have become a summer ritual in Vermont: Local flash floods causing surprise, extensive damage in one town, while nearby towns are spared.

The two-day rainfall total at Burlington was 2.67 inches, and I'm sure we'll hear reports of a lot more than that as we get through the morning.  Even before Monday's rain began in earnest, more than two inches of rain had been reported from Newbury, Montpelier and Weston, Vermont from Sunday's storms.

Meanwhile, people were cleaning up from storms and tornadoes in the Tennessee Valley on Sunday. Here's a video taken by a guy who was surprised when a small tornado passed between his house and his neighbor's as he filmed from his porch.

He was damn lucky the tornado was quite weak, a EF-0 with winds I'd guess at 65 to 70 mph. Had it been stronger, he might have been blown away and killed.

Here's the video:



Now it's the west's turn. The opening salvo came yesterday, when a tornado touched down in the Denver metro area.  The bigger threat is today and tomorrow, but not from tornadoes.

Torrential thunderstorms are likely in a wide area covering most of Colorado, much of New Mexico, and western Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Expect lots of dangerous flash floods in that region today and tomorrow.

It's a set up similar to what happened last September, when Colorado had some of its worst flooding in history. Let's hope there's no repeat.

Meanwhile, here's a news report of some guys who filmed the Denver tornado forming directly overhead at their shop: