7/19/10 DISC: MA

[Scott Nelson]

Some nice structure on the Tornado warned storm in Northern Worcester County last night. Confirmed funnels in Garner and Clinton. National Weather Service looking at reports of short lived touchdowns in Ashburnham and Lancaster. Damage limited to wires down and trees toppled.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Nice pics, Scott. I saw the sup up in MA on radar, thought it looked good for a while but it seemed to lose punch quickly. It was really spinning, though - would have loved to have gotten a look at the base. SPC had the area in a Slight, but tornado probs were zero, which I thought strange given the instability, reasonable LCLs, and some surprisingly decent low-level helicity values. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear about a confirmed touchdown from the MA storm. I also noticed there was another supercell way up in east central VT/west central NH that also looked really great on radar (you have to use GYX in Maine for the Connecticut River valley, Burlington radar can't see much beyond the mountains just to the southeast). I have close relatives who live right in that storm's path up in Bradford, VT, but they just said it got really dark with lots of wind and lightning, etc... As far as rotation goes, they don't really know what to look for.

 

[Isaac Pato]

Scott, what was your location when you got these photos? From the time of day, looks like you were west of 495? I saw the overshooting top of the storm from Boston at around 7pm, I think it was still west of Fitchburg at that point. It was pretty impressive looking, with the anvil streaming off to the NNE and a nice and crisp updraft.

It wasn't even backlit at that point, so I was pointing it out to people at work and nobody was impressed by it. I was about half an hour from my car, so I was really frustrated when I saw it get tornado warned and how classic it looked on radar/visually. I made it back to my car at Alewife station just before 8, and was able to make an intercept on it when it hit route 27 in Sudbury. Really wasn't doing all that hot at that point, but saw some nice anvil crawler bolts on the way out there. Probably would have gotten some decent lightning shots had I stayed in Boston.

At any rate, I enjoyed the chase. My brother was clutch on the navigation and we managed to find a good position by a field that allowed a view of the west in the line of what (at least had been) the meso.

 

[Scott Nelson]

Kind of a fun day. This was one of those situations that I wasn't looking for storms at all. Came home from a run, ate with the family and turned on the Weather Channel in time to see that some Northern MA storms were in full "ramp up" mode. With limited visibility from my central MA location I got on my bicycle (old school chasing lol) and made it to the highest location I could find in my heavy wooded area looking North. It produced some really nice stucture for some time and I'm kicking myself that I didn't bring a better camera. So these particular shots were taken about 30 miles South of the storm between 6:20pm and 7:00pm.

 

[NickSeyour]

Oh yeah real nice storm got under a tornado warning for the first time in awhile. Scary lightning strikes @ my house.