Severe Weather Outbreak Hits Vermont: Damage, Oddities, Photos, Analysis

Mobile home shoved off foundation by severe thunderstorm near
Highgate, VT Tuesday. Note the mobile mobile home knocked
over kerosene tank, causing a leak. 

Well, that was an exciting afternoon Tuesday in Vermont, wasn't it?

I have to say the severe weather outbreak that hit the Green Mountain State was the most intense of this summer. It overperformed, in my opinion.

It doesn't take much to push a lackluster setup for severe weather to something relatively impressive, at least by Vermont standards. We're not exactly the Tornado Capital Of The World, as we all know.

Some relatively meager ingredients for severe storms really came together nicely to produce Tuesday's wild weather. It made it a bigger storm day than many of us anticipated.

There was some big time damage in a few spots in Vermont, and one tragedy possibly caused by the storm.  A kayaker drowned and another is missing after they disappeared in Malletts Bay in Colchester. The storms were blowing through the area at the time, but it's unclear whether the storms caused or contributed to the deaths.

Car smushed by fallen tree after the severe storm in St Albans, Vermont.
My house is two miles from this location and not so much as a twig
fell. Very localized damage.

A home in North Hero caught fire, probably because it was struck by lightning. I saw a mobile home pushed off its foundation in Highgate. The mobile home pushed over a kerosene tank and the fuel was leaking.

I also saw trees down throughout the northern part of St. Albans and the surrounding towns of Highgate, Swanton and Sheldon.  There are many other storm reports from the NWS/South Burlington.

Trees are also down on houses in Burlington's New North End. Lots of trees came down on Grand Isle. No wonder: Winds gusted to an incredible 76 mph in North Hero

Yeah, this was impressive.

We knew there would be some severe storms. We knew in advance Tuesday would be hot and humid, one good ingredient to destabilize the atmosphere to produce the risk of severe storms. It turned out the heat got hotter than some of us expected, because the intense sunshine lasted into mid-afternoon.

That led to temperatures in much of Vermont to get above 90 degrees, a couple degrees warmer than expected. That, in turn, made the atmosphere a bit more unstable than it otherwise would have been.

Numerous trees down around a house in Sheldon, Vermont after Tuesday's storm.
Miraculously, neither the house nor cars parked in the driveway were damaged.

We also knew winds were changing in speed and direction with height, which would promote a lot of storms some severe. I guess those conditions led to an even better setup for storms than at least I suspected.

As the event unfolded, instability was highest in a narrow Champlain Valley band from Burlington northward. And that's where the worst storms hit. This system certainly produced!

LUCKY AND UNLUCKY

Big disaters and little hiccups, like we had today, bring winners and losers.

As is always the case, a few places got nailed, while others, nothing. Note that the National Weather Service in South Burlington only had a gust to 36 mph and a trace of rain, while they got nailed across town in the New North End of Burlington.

I was certainly alarmed when I found myself trying to drive through a blinding microburst on Interstate 89 just two miles north of my house. Tree branches flew by in the wind that was trying to shift my truck off the road into the median. It was rather frightening.

My house is surrounded by large trees, some of which could fall on my house and perennial gardens full of fragile plants. I went home to check. Despite the microburst being just two or three miles from my house, no so much as one twig came down. The day lilies danced happily in a light lingering breeze as the violent storm rumbled off toward Sheldon and points beyond.
At one home in Sheldon, several large trees fell on one property. Aside from a few twigs on the roof, the house was undamaged. A half dozen trees were across the driveway. The trees fell around the cars, but not on them, leaving them unharmed.

Meanwhile, a single tree fell into a small parking lot behind Danform Shoes in St. Albans.  The tree crushed a car.  Had the owner parked in any other space at the store, things would have been just fine. Go figure.


ROTATION? PROBABLY NOT

Looks like a funnel cloud as the storm approached St. Albans, Vermont
Tuesday, but the National Weather Service says this was probably
just an eddie and convective debris ahead of the strong downburst.

I want to first emphasize that it appears all the damage from these storms appear to be from straight line winds. The problems I saw after the Franklin County storm all literally pointed that way.

In areas where there were numerous trees and branches down, they all fell in the same direction, indicating straight line winds, and not a tornado.

The same was true for a flattened corn field near Highgate. All the corn stocks had fallen in the same direction.

That said, many strong to severe storms rotate, and most of those rotating storms actually do NOT produce a tornado.

However,  I thought I might have saw some interesting things as the storm moved across Lake Champlain toward St. Albans and Sheldon.  An area of dark clouds on the southern end of the storm appeared to be rotating and I might have caught a funnel cloud.

Or not.

I showed the photo to the National Weather Service in South Burlington. They got back to me very quickly and said, "It would likely be some convective debris caused by eddies and cooling from the downburst winds. Funnel clouds typically do not form ahead of downburst winds."

Proof that not every "funnel cloud" is indeed a funnel cloud.

Still, it was fun to watch Scud clouds rose rapidly into and near this area into the storm, which you sometimes see with a rotating storm. Then again, scud clouds often get caught in storm updrafts, so I'm sure that it was just the typical big storm ingesting more warm, humid air to feed on.

Gorgeous rainbow after the storm in Sheldon, Vermont Tuesday

Too bad I wasn't videoing when I saw this, but oh well. You can't think of everything.

It's more proof that as destructive as these storms are, they are beautiful.

As I was checking out the damage in Sheldon, a second, weaker thunderstorm passed through. It delivered a beautiful parting shot: A brilliant rainbow, with lightning streaking through it.

TODAY

More showers and thunderstorms will be scattered around today, but things won't be nearly as bad as yesterday in Vermont.  (It could get a little interesting today in the Mid-Atlantic states and southern New England.)

Some thunderstorms could produce heavy downpours, frequent lightning and gusty winds especially in the southeastern half of Vermont, but it will be relatively manageable.

Tonight the cold front will have moved through, and Thursday will prove to be a beautiful Vermont summer day, with sunny skies, low humidity and temperatures for all of us staying at or below 80 degrees during the afternoon.