Rare Tornado In Northeast Maine On Monday

A confirmed tornado in a remote part of Washington County, in
northeastern Maine on Monday. Photo by David Cofin.

Here in Vermont this past Monday, it was a gorgeous day, aside from some mild evening showers and thundershowers over far northern areas.

You didn't have to go to far to the northeast to get into some wild weather, though. A cold front was drifting down into northern New England from Quebec Monday afternoon and evening. Near Vermont, the dynamics weren't there to create anything in the way of strong storms.

But up in Maine, the cold front had some power to it.  Strong to severe thunderstorms swept across northern Maine, culminating in a tornado touchdown in remote Kossuth Township in the northeastern part of the state.

The EF-1 tornado was in an area not far from the New Brunswick border and southeast of Millinocket.  It was a small tornado, only 200 yards wide with a path length of a quarter mile. Estimated winds were 90 mph and about 120 softwood trees were snapped or uprooted.  Nobody was injured and no homes were damaged.

As you can see in the photo, a passerby named David Coffin got a great photo of the tornado.

Tornadoes do happen from time to time in Maine, as they do pretty much everywhere in the nation. This was the first confirmed tornado in Maine this year, the National Weather Service in Caribou says.

Maine averages two tornadoes per year.  Here in Vermont, we average one per year.  Maybe I'm jinxing things, but I'm not aware of any twisters in the Green Mountain State since at least 2014.