A small section of Upton, MA is recovering this morning after a severe thunderstorm brought severe damage to Main Street, Warren Street, and Ephraims Way around 240 AM. National Weather Service survey teams will investigate to determine whether or not this damage has been caused by a tornado or a microburst. Early indications are that this is a tornado, but the final assessment is to be done by the NWS.
I woke up around 2 AM to get a drink of water and since I knew some intense weather was possible, I checked the radar. What I found was a developing supercell thunderstorm with weak rotation heading directly towards Uxbridge, Northbridge, and Upton.
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| Radarscope KBOX radar 220 AM |
The hook just south of Uxbridge in the top image and the hint of bright green next to the brighter red in the same spot in the bottom image instantly caught my attention. This indicated rotation as the red and green colors measure the direction and velocity of upper level winds. At this point the rotation is still weak. However, any strengthening of the rotation could produce a weak tornado or a microburst. Just 5 minutes later as the cell crossed into Uxbridge that is exactly what happened.
I went out to my porch and around 235 AM there was a 30-45 second burst of intense rain and gusty winds, but no immediately obvious damage occurred in my section of Whitinsville . Just after passing through my area the rotation tightened even more. I was concerned about the Riverdale and Rockdale sections of Northbridge. Meteorologists from Alabama and Oklahoma started to tweet me expressing concern over what they were seeing on the radar.
This is all meteorological jargon so if you can't follow along that is OK, that is what we went to school for. The point is, this was no ordinary severe thunderstorm for Massachusetts. The National Weather Service did issue a Severe Thunderstorm Warning at 232 AM. In the warning it says a tornado is possible, although no official tornado warning was issued.
Shortly after the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK issued a "mesoscale discussion" noting the potential for isolated tornadoes.
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| SPC MCD |
Not long after I saw Upton PD tweet about numerous emergency calls around Glen Ave and Main Street. I'm glad the damage is isolated, but it is significant for the folks who were hit. There have been no reports of injuries thankfully. I haven't been to bed (save for a 25 minute nap on the train) so I will be going to get a coffee. I'll have more on this later after the NWS survey is complete.
-Zack Green
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