08/07/08 DISC: MA/CT/NY

[Dean Meece]

There has been a funnel cloud in Western MA and a Water spout off New Haven CT so far and it looks like there could be a water spout headed towards Sag Harbor Long Island now.

Western MA Funnel Cloud:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/08/funnel_cloud_re.html

Below thumbnail is of the New Haven Waterspout from the WABC website:

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/index

There were Tornado Warnings issues before both events.

Dean

 

[B Ozanne]

Quite a day in lower Fairfield County. I went outside around lunch and was surprised to see some beautiful towering cu going up in all directions. Most severe weather days in this part of the country are very hazy, but today we had great visibility. I was watching discrete cells in a north/south line across New England all afternoon. Nice display of cirrus blow off by later afternoon on the satellite images. I came home around 6pm to a tornado warned cell heading toward Bridgeport, CT (SPC had the whole country at less than 2% today). I'm not sure how that will verify, but the cell had a great inflow induced hook on radar.

I went running around 7pm as more cells were forming to my north and west, but we had distinctly entered some cooler/drier air and I thought the storms would be dying. By the time I got home at 8pm we got slammed with pea to dime sized hail. I've never seen hail like that in CT. It was covering the ground in many places. Some of the pieces were perfectly clear and round. A few disc shaped pieces as well. Again, it was great to see hail like that right out my back door.

We cleared for about 15 minutes then another storm popped up right over my house and brought more hail and wind. The town directly to my west didn't get a drop in this storm.

 

[Dean Meece]

New Haven GRLevel3 Images

Hook visible on 6:33 PM base reflectivity:

Good Rotation capture:

VIL:

Another Rotation capture closer to 7PM:

 

[B Ozanne]

Thanks for posting those captures. Do you have the base reflectivity image just before 6:33? I thought that was the most impressive one, but maybe I am wrong.

 

[Dean Meece]

Unforunately no, I don't have anything archived before then. However, I do have some captures when it was about to run into Long Island and another Tornado Warning was issued.

BR:

SRV:

Zoom on the 8:11 SRV:

 

[Dean Meece]

Supposedly earlier in the day as well:

Related to this article:
http://www.newsday.com/ny-listor0808,0,5044379.story


Dean

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Interesting day to be sure in CT. Several cells developed rotation in a very minimal helicity environmnent, with backbuilding greatly enhancing the available shear. The result was as you see, with the L.I. Sound cell being by far the best of the bunch. But it's only technically accurate to call this the "New Haven waterspout", since as far as I know the spout wasn't visible from New Haven at all -I certainly couldn't see it. The WABC picture above appears to be taken from Long Island.

Edit: I have a capture from 6:34, I'll see if I can figure out how to post it.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

OK, couldn't get the "insert image" thing to work, but this link should work:
radar capture.

 

[Sam Sagnella]

WFSB-TV (CBS/Hartford) has gotten their hands on some really nice amateur video of the tornadic waterspout off of Milford yesterday afternoon. As of 1PM, it can be seen on their website as Video 3 of 6 on the right side of the page. Based on the damage I've been seeing on the news, I'd say it looks like there was an E-F0/E-F1 tornado that tracked/skipped across portions of Trumbull/Stratford/Milford during the rush hour.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Wow, that's some spectacular video off Milford CT. How often do you see a large multiple vortex waterspout?

Here's a better link for the video: channel 3 video index

When I saw the incredible rotation of that cell I had to make a quick decision whether to try and get closer or not. Pros: It was a tornado warned cell with huge rotation in CT, a no brainer! Cons: The storm was headed out towards Long Island; it was rush hour and all the roads would be gridlocked; it was almost dark already; and the precip core would be between me and the area of intense rotation with no possibility of a core punch. In the end I decided to stay relatively put and just see what I could see from New Haven harbor. I know all too well the futility of trying to chase this area at that time of day. Still, after seeing that video, a part of me is really pissed off that I didn't give it a try. I just KNOW I would have ended up intensely aggravated sitting in completely stalled traffic on I-95 just short of the Milford exit. But still...