Weather Surprises Keep Popping Up Nearby And Beyond

Storm chaser Simon Brewer, who usually spends his time in the
Great Plains chasing tornadoes, had to travel to Glens Falls, New York
to capture this impressive wall cloud, that did produce a tornado. 

Although I don't have super shocking weather news to bring up today, there are still plenty of reports to confirm the weather is always surprising, in small and big ways.

First of all, I'm a little surprised I have to make this correction: 

Unlike what I said in yesterday's post, "no tornado is known to have touched down in that area," a tornado DID in fact touch down in that thunderstorm with the impressive wall cloud around Glens Falls.

The National Weather Service office in Albany New York confirms that Glens Falls storm, and presumably its wall cloud, DID produce a tornado.

The tornado was an EF-1 with winds of between 75 and 110 mph. It damaged at least one home and sheared off and uprooted many trees not far from Interstate 87 in Glens Falls. It actually crossed that busy highway, but luckily, it was a bit weaker by the time it hit that Interstate.

I'm impressed by how wide and long-tracked the tornado was for this far into the interior Northeast. Usually tornadoes are narrow and very brief.  This one was at one point as much as a quarter mile wide and the tornado traveled a total of 8.6 miles before lifting.

This was the second time within two weeks that a tornado touched down close to the southwestern Vermont border. In both cases, the tornado's parent thunderstorm moved into Vermont, caused straight line wind damage.  This time, Poultney was pretty hard hit by those winds.

WASHINGTON/OREGON STORMS

Speaking of surprising severe thunderstorms, it was eastern Washington State and Oregon's turn to endure supercells and damaging storms. It's fairly rare for conditions to come together in this part of the country for a lot of severe weather, but they sure did on Saturday.

Winds with these storms gusted as high as 97 mph in Washington, 85 mph in Oregon and 83 mph in Idaho.  I'm unsure if any tornadoes touched down with these storms. I'm sure local National Weather Service offices will be checking on that. There were certainly plenty of reports of damage in this area.

QUEBEC/CANADIAN YO-YO WEATHER

We here in Vermont have certainly cooled down from that record heat we and Quebec had last week.

That heat spread into much of eastern Canada as the week closed. Record highs included 93 degrees in Bathurst, New Brunswick,  31.8 in Gaspe, Quebec, 84 in Gander, Newfoundland and 82 in St. John's Newfoundland.

Up in Quebec, where temperatures were in the 80s and well into the 90s,  things had gotten ridiculously cool by this morning. Snow was reported in the Laurentian highlands this morning.

Don't worry, that snow won't work itself nearly this far south. We're done with snow until autumn.  But it will be remarkably cool for the season, with high temperatures in most of northern Vermont not making it past 60 degrees today. That's more typical for late April.  Monday will be quite cool as well before a warming trend kicks in to bring us up into the seasonable 70s by the end of the week.

The secondary cold front that brought in today's cool weather also managed to surprise me last night. It was expected to only produce sprinkles.  But there was widespread rains last evening across northern Vermont.  It wasn't super heavy, but my rain gauge in St. Albans, Vermont collected 0.12 inches of rain, and I was expecting nothing more than a trace.