06/06/05 REPORTS: New England

[Sam Sagnella]

Incredibly turbulent sky behind the passage of a gust front in Westport, Connecticut at around 500pm EDT.

Extremely weak and short-lived area of rotation:

The Whale's Mouth.

For a few minutes, it looked like smoke coming from this chimney.

radar courtesy www.my-cast.com

 

[B Ozanne]

The irony couldn't be any thicker. While tornado watches were issued for my current home county in Vermont I was sitting on top of marine air on the summit of Mount Washington.

The weather on the summit got pretty interesting. We had some pea-sized hail and a few gusts to 60mph. The real story was when the second storm was still about 20 miles away. Being on the top of a mountain we were encased in fog when the windows lit up with lightning and the crackle of thunder. Again, we had been watching radar for three hours and this came from the blue (or in our case the gray). A few minutes later a tiny cell popped up on radar right over the summit. It just proves how fast these things can form.

Here are the pics of the immense rainbow that followed:

http://www.mountwashington.org/comments/20...5/Merged-sm.jpg

http://www.mountwashington.org/comments/20...ow6605-2-sm.jpg

http://www.mountwashington.org/comments/20...Blue6605-lg.jpg

Sam...nice pics out of Westport. My family in Darien, CT had a similar story. Dark skies, good gust front, but the cold Long Island Sound really shut things down.

Edit: I'd like to credit Jim Salge of the Mount Washington Observatory who took those photos.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Nice pics.

I had a very disappointing day. I drove up to the eastern portion of the tornado watch with a friend of mine, after seeing on radar that a line of isolated storms was developing in upstate NY well ahead of the MCS that was rolling across southwestern portions of the state. We intercepted a line of storms in northwest CT and actually managed to find an updraft base that produced what appeared to be a small wall cloud for about 5 minutes. Very little visible rotation though, and it was quickly undercut by cool air - before we knew it we were sitting behind a typical New England gust front much like the one in Sam’s pictures. Too bad, I really had high hopes for the day, since the RUC was progging pretty good helicity in the Hudson valley area. I thought, “finally, some decent directional shear for onceâ€￾ but no, things lined out as usual. Still, it was good to have some severe weather to play with. The terrain up there is absolutely awful for chasing, but it’s something I’ve grown used to. These days I just accept the hills and trees as part of the deal if you want to chase in New England. The traffic is another story. I really thought it wouldn't be that bad since it's still pretty rural in that corner of CT. Wrong again! It was a looong drive home... :x

 

[Francesco]

Same region of New England.. but to the north across the canadian border is where my chase began. As a cell was popping up above Malone, NY, I realized that that storm would cross over the border and I would in fact be able to intercept it. Here is a pic of that cell..

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