westislandweather.com

(Above: NASA Landsat 5 image taken June 5th)
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Last Week’s Tornado Event Had
Something in Store for SouthCoast

MLBaron westislandweather.com

WEST ISLAND: By now we all know what happened in Springfield and its surrounding towns. This once in a lifetime severe weather outbreak of 3 tornadoes in Massachusetts, one of which left an astounding half mile wide path of destruction 39 miles long brought back memories of the deadly Worcester tornado outbreak of 1953. Debris from that storm fell from the sky dozens of miles away, including a frozen mattress and some books found floating in Boston Harbor. In last week’s tornado some debris was tossed upwards 30,000 ft before falling back to earth. A gas station slip from Brimfield was found 80 miles away in Weymouth. Locally, down bursts or sudden blasts of destructive strong wind are often misreported as a tornado. Although they may appear similar at first- both have a different damage pattern left by the wind. A down burst in general tends to have a central “crater” with debris jutting out from it’s center, versus a tornado having a defined swirling path into it’s center Both typically evolve from intense thunderstorms. Most weather instruments, especially anemometers (that measure wind speed) do not survive the extreme wind speeds created by tornadoes. That’s were SDA or Storm Damage Assessment comes to play. It’s sort of the CSI for meteorologists who examine where and how structures failed, width of tree trunks snapped and the impact of building materials, vehicles, and common household items that become missiles. After all the data is collected the wind speed is estimated.

(Above) Lightning strikes the evening of June 1st, 2011
Southeastern MA was finally placed in a tornado watch late in the afternoon (last Wednesday) as newly formed cells progressed eastward.

A cluster of strong storms formed off Long Island and headed directly east towards Block Island and Buzzards Bay. The cooling effect of the 64 degree water caused the cluster of thunderstorms to lose it’s punch. Only a few sprinkles and rumbles of thunder about 830PM could be heard out in the distance as the remnants passed through uneventfully.

This was in sharp contrast to the devastation wrought by the same air mass 90 miles away a few hours earlier.

A days weather for June 1st, 2011

WEATHER DATA COMPARISON FOR
WEST ISLAND,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, SPRINGFIELD MA JUN 1

Hi Temp: 73 .........................87
Lo Temp: 59 ........................64
Wind: 11 mph .....................15 mph
Gust: 38 mph ......................160 mph est. F3 Tornado
Rain: . 00 .............................1.31
Humidity: 100% ..................100%
Dew point: 74.5 .................. 74.4
Low Barometer: 29.84......... 29.76
Damaged Buildings: 0.............. 1,000+
Destroyed Buildings: 0.............. 200+
Deaths: 0 ....................................4
Injuries: 0...................................... 200

West Island Weather Station has 3 independent “black-box” recorders that register weather parameters every minute, 24/7.

The National Weather Service link for a complete storm report:http://www.westislandweather.com/Data/Document1.pdf