Vermont "Tornado Drought" Ended Last Wednesday

Tornado damage cleanup continues in Windham, Vermont, as
seen in this photo from WCAX-TV

Vermont is hardly tornado alley.

We average just one tornado per year, and most of those tornadoes over the years have been quite weak.

In recent years, though, Vermont has had a sort of tornado drought.

There hadn't been one since 2012 in the Green Mountain State, even as the rest of New England and the Northeast have had something of an uptick in tornado activity over the past few years. 

Turns out, the Vermont tornado drought, or whatever you want to call it, ended Wednesday. 

The National Weather Service office in Albany, New York confirmed a tornado struck the town of Windham, in southern Vermont last Wednesday. 

By the standards of, say, Oklahoma, this one was weak. But it was relatively strong by Vermont standards. Tornadoes are ranked in a zero to 5 scale, with 5 being the strongest.  This one was an EF-1, almost an EF-2, with winds of betweeen 105 and 110 mph.

The twister damaged the roofs and siding of several homes and sheared off or toppled dozens of trees. Outdoor furniture and other debris was tossed hundreds of yards

The tornado was about 350 yards wide and had a path that was 0.75 miles long. Again, not huge, but fairly impressive for Vermont. Nobody was injured by this tornado, so that's good.

WCAX-TV reports that at one house, the tornado blew out windows, damaged the roof and tossed down a bunch of trees while a terrified family huddled in the home. 

Windham is in a pretty mountainous area, just east of some of southern Vermont's largest ski areas. It's proof that mountains and hills don't necessarily protect you from tornadoes. 

The tornado seems to have been associated with a supercell that got going well northwest of Albany, New York.  The storm also produced confirmed EF-1 tornado touchdowns in Johnstown and Saratoga Springs, New York, NWS New York says.