Tornadoes Strike Near Buffalo, New York Of All Places

Debris and a picnic table on a roof after
a tornado in Hamburg, New York Thursday.
Image from WKBW.

Quite a huge supercell thunderstorm managed to get going near Buffalo, New York Thursday, sending two tornadoes charging through the city's suburbs.

The area around Hamburg, New York - much more famous for epic lake effect snowstorms than tornadoes - was hardest hit.  (Hamburg famously got up to seven feet of snow in a 2014 storm.)

An EF2 tornado with winds of up to 105 mph blew through the town, especially trashing the Hamburg Fairgrounds, reports television station WKBW.

There, dozens of cars had their windows blown out and lots of structures, including the grandstand, were badly damaged.

A second tornado struck the nearby town of Holland, New York. It was an EF1 with 95 mph winds.

One video that you might have already seen bears showing in this post.  Look at the bottom of this post for it.

The storms then moved toward the southeast, causing a swath of straight line wind damage through western and southern New York and northeastern Pennsylvania.

At the same time, more locally, a smaller severe thunderstorm, mostly in southern Quebec, clipped extreme northeastern New York and the northwestern tip of Vermont. Trees ane a barn were damaged in Champlain, New York shortly after noon and a tractor trailer blew over.

Tornadoes are not unheard of in western New York, or anywhere in New York for that matter.

WKBW says the last tornado to hit the region near Buffalo before Thursday was on November 14, 2011.

Here's the home security video that shows a quick tornado lifting an SUV off the ground even as the house itself appears undamaged: