A small tornado — a rarity in Vermont — developed on the tail of a thunderstorm in Middlebury on Friday, according to the National Weather Service in Burlington.
The tornado traveled only 1 mile, but it left destruction in its path, from uprooted trees to the removal of an attached garage from a home. Two people reported minor injuries following the storm, according to Middlebury Police Department.
The National Weather Service has determined that the tornado qualified as an EF-1, the second-weakest type on the Enhanced Fujita Scale used to classify tornadoes. Tornadoes in this category typically have winds between 86 and 110 mph, a service report shows. the scale classifies tornadoes within a range from EF-0 (weakest) to EF-5 (strongest).
Before Friday’s tornado, the last confirmed tornado in Vermont occurred in Windham in 2019, Meteorologist Conor Lahiff said.
“In general, I think it’s unusual to have a tornado anywhere in Vermont,” Lahiff said.
What happened during the Middlebury tornado?
The tornado on Friday touched down around 1:50 p.m., and only lasted about five minutes. The tornado’s path was 75 yards wide maximum, and winds reached up to 110 mph, according to a National Weather Service report.
The tornado touched down just northeast of Juniper Lane and ended north of Painter Road, the report stated.
The National Weather Service reported the following damage:
A barrel was blown at a house, smashing a window.
Multiple softwood trees were either uprooted or had snapped trunks.
An attached garage was detached from a home and collapsed. This caused damage to the home’s shingled roof.
A car was flipped on its side.
Roofing was removed from multiple farm buildings.
A child and an adult both reported minor injuries, but only the child was brought to Porter Hospital in Middlebury for treatment, Middlebury Police said.
According to Lahiff, the tornado remains under investigation, but the weather conditions at the time seemed conducive to forming a tornado. At the time, the area was under a severe thunderstorm warning.
“These kinds of tornadoes that end up forming on usually the tail end of a line of thunderstorms, they’re typically very small in scale and very brief to spin up and kind of spin down at the same time,” Lahiff said. This makes it difficult to predict the weather events ahead of time, he added.
Why are tornadoes so rare in Vermont?
Vermont has only reported 46 confirmed tornadoes since the National Weather Service began recording the data in the 1950s, Lahiff said.
Most tornadoes in Vermont are small — EF-0 or EF-1. The most intense tornadoes that have occurred in the state have been classified as EF-2, or strong with wind speeds between 111 and 135 mph, according to a National Weather Service report. About 14 of the 46 tornadoes reported in Vermont since the 1950s has registered as an EF-2 event, Lahiff said.
Several conditions make tornadoes rare in Vermont, including the state’s weather patterns and terrain, which does not allow tornadoes to form close to the ground, Lahiff said.
“We typically don’t get the type of severe thunderstorms that are conducive to producing tornadoes,” Lahiff said. “It takes the right atmospheric conditions and typically clashes between colder air mass and warmer air mass, which you get over the plains this time of year.”
by Elizabeth Murray (2021, Mar 29) Burlington Free Press
