New England's Newly Tornadic Reputation Got Another Boost Monday

A storm near Barre, Vermont Monday. Photo via Twitter, Geoff Marion

The other day, I mentioned in this blog thingy that the Northeastern United States is having an unusually tornadic year, even if the nation as the whole is relatively quiet on the twister front.

New England's tornadic reputation was burnished Monday when more tornado warnings were issued in central Massachusetts, and in of all places, the rugged White Mountains region of northern New Hampshire.

It remains to be seen as to whether any of the rapidly rotating storms detected on radar Monday actually produced tornadoes that touched down. But they might have. I imagine National Weather Service meteorologists might be looking for evidence of that today.

But certainly, funnel clouds were sighted in northern New Hampshire, and what appeared to be a rapidly rotating wall cloud was filmed over Granby, Massachusetts.

Certainly, there was plenty of wind damage to trees and power lines and such across much of New England. That includes here in Vermont, though there were no tornado warnings and no obvious signs of  twisters in the Green Mountain State.

Some of highlights of the Vermont damage included a damaged barn and numerous snapped off trees in Waitsfield, trees down on Interstate 89 near Waterbury and Interstate 91 in Orange County. Part of Route 7A near Shaftsbury were closed by downed trees and power lines.

Possible funnel cloud in Durham, New Hampshire Monday. Photo
 by Julie Smith

At least we got some needed rain. In some cases lots of it. In a few cases, almost too much. Burlington, got 2.29 inches of rain Monday, a record high precipitation level for the date.

I have to check but I think Monday was Burlington's wettest day in at least a year, if not more.

Flash flooding was reported in northwestern New York. And I'm sure there were some washed out or eroded road edges and driveways in parts of the Champlain Valley and down the Winooski River Valley in central Vermont as big rains fell in short periods of time.

Jericho reported 1.44 inches of rain from just one thunderstorm. The same initial thunderstorm Monday afternoon dumped 1.81 inches of rain on Middlesex. We did need the rain. It was super dry around my house in St. Albans before Monday.

Then, a pair of downpours blustered through in the afternoon, and then we had several hours in the evening in which it rained constantly, sometimes fairly heavily.

The rest of the week looks nice, with plenty of sun and comfortable temperatures and humidity levels. It looks like it will rain again this coming weekend. At this point, it doesn't look like we're in line for any severe thunderstorms, but there might be locally heavy rain again.