While going through my newsfeed this morning, I decided to look at an
article on Bloomberg from two days ago with the title: “There Was Nothing
Normal About America’s Freakish Winter Weather” by one Brian K. Sullivan. Of
course, my inner grammar zealot had a snit because “About” was capitalized in a
title despite the fact it was a preposition and further noted with disdain that
there was no period following the initial in Brian K. Sullivan’s name; however,
I am not my inner grammar zealot so we’ll ignore Bloomberg’s grammar sins and
move on to what made this article fodder for being wrong on the internet.
When it comes to articles that venture into hypotheses regarding global
warming, I am always on the lookout for the usual sins that reporters make on
this subject, especially the one that treats the occurrances of one year as
proof or disproof of global warming. As I am sure all my readers already know
(and if you don’t, just fake it), climate trends are not statistically
significant on scales of mere years. Decadal data, as an average or a sliding
average, is the smallest timescale that has any grip in demonstrating real
world climate trends with statistical significance; and of course, centurial
data is preferable. Much to my disappointment with finding something to blog
about, the author of the article made none of those mistakes, alas. All things
considered, it’s actually a nice piece about the weather this Winter and how
that fits into evolving hypotheses of global warming.
The author saved the best for last: there was a tornado this February in
Massachusetts, something I vaguely remember from the news this Winter; and
there in the very last sentence of his article, he goofed. Here’s what he
wrote:
“officials confirmed it was a tornado, the first ever in a state that began documenting its weather patterns back in the 1600s. “
Now, something that every fourth grader in tornado alley knows is that
tornadoes can occur anywhere – even in New England. When we moved to Maine from
Texas, I know I disappointed a friend from Aroostook County who wanted to shock
me with the fact that northern Maine gets a small number of tornadoes every
year. I’ve lived in tornado alley twice in my life and I’m quite aware that
tornadoes came pop up anywhere when the conditions are right. I’m afraid my
friend from Houlton, Maine was rather put off by my lack of surprise over Maine
tornadoes. After all, there have been tornadoes reported in every state, and in
almost every country in the world too. This is bread and butter knowledge if
you take advantage of attending one of the National Weather Service’s free
weather spotter classes – which you can take whether or not you plan on
becoming a spotter. The class is free regardless. I think everyone should take
one – you’ll learn a lot about weather you never knew before, even if you’re a
nerd like me. Great classes, good stuff to learn, absolutely no money required:
so what are you waiting for? Go grab some free weather education – you won’t be
sorry!
So how about tornadoes in Massachusetts, then? Well, our Bloomberg author was
wrong on the internet – and he was doing so well with that article too. It
almost seems a shame to take him to task for it, but alas, I’ve written enough
so far to see this blog post to the end. It turns out that the first-ever
report of a tornado in what would become the future United States of American
was out of the small hamlet of Lynn in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a scant five
miles north of Boston. I found the tornado report from Lynn while doing my
research for this blog post. I knew the author of the Bloomberg article had
been wrong on the internet, though, because I recalled that the worst tornado
to ever visit New England had been the June 9, 1983 F4 tornado that leveled
part of the City of Worcester, Massachusetts. It came at the end of a three-day
tornado outbreak that left hundreds dead and thousands injured, not to mention
the requisite millions of dollars of property damage.
The outbreak started on June 7 as a storm rolled off the rockies and set up a
line of supercell convective storms. The first tornado activity was a handful
of small F0 through F2 tornadoes that briefly touched down on a Sunday
afternoon along the eastmost Colorado-Nebraska border and in northwest Kansas.
This was followed that evening by several F2, two F3 and one F4 tornadoes
gouging their way across central Nebraska and into north-central Iowa. Sioux
City and Fort Dodge lucked out by being just missed by the course of several
tornadoes and the death toll was a modest 11, mostly because the storms crossed
sparsely-populated farmland and ranchland. The storm front moved on overnight
over the Mississippi River and into the eastern half of the Midwest.
On Monday afternoon, June 8, 1953, this same storm spawned a line of nine
tornadoes 300 miles long north-to-south, crossing the northern Midwest from the
top of the Michigan mitten to the middle of Ohio. The worst of the tornadoes
was an F5 that cut through northern half of the City of Flint, Michigan,
killing 116 and injuring 844. In addition, an F4 started some 30 miles
southwest of Toledo which cut up to Lake Erie at Sandusky and then traveled
along the lake shore into Cleveland, leaving a 120 mile path of destruction
with 17 dead and 379 injured. Overnight, the storm continued east over the
mountains of the Appalachian Orogeny.
The early afternoon of Tuesday, June 9 was extremely hot. The stormfront
crossed the Hudson River and started its first actions with three inch hail
falling on the Connecticut River at the Vermont-Massachusetts border. The
National Weather Service recognized that southern New England might be struck
by some unprecedented weather – but in the 1940s and 1950s, it was policy not
to announce that tornadoes might be on their way for fear of creating a panic
in the general public. In a era before the severe storm watch system was put
into place in 1972, the National Weather Service announced instead the first
severe thunderstorm warning ever issued in New England.
At 2:25 PM, a mile-wide F4 tornado developed just east of the huge Quabbin
Reservoir that the late great H. P. Lovecraft often invoked in his famous
horror stories placed in Massachusetts. It cut a 40 mile long path of
devastation into the City of Worcester, killing 94 people in the hour and a
half it was on the ground and injuring 1228 others. As it died, an F3 developed
6 miles south of Worcester in Milbury, It traveled some thirty miles to where
it died out in Foxboro on the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border. The last two
spots of activity of the outbreak were two tornadoes that briefly touched down
just to the west of the City of Portsmouth, New Hampshire before the squall
line of storm cells moved out over the Atlantic Ocean.
In total, the 1953 “Flint-Worcester” Outbreak spawned 50 tornadoes over 3 days,
killing a total of 247 people, injuring 2562, and causing over 2 billion
dollars of property damage. The Flint tornado is currently rated the tenth most
deadly tornado in the history of the USA and the Worcester tornado is currently
rated as the twenty-second most deadly. Of the 25 most deadly tornadoes in the
country, the Worcester tornado of 1953 is the most easterly and the only one in
New England; all the others are in the South or the Midwest.
All of the references today deserve a visit if you want to learn more on this
subject. The Stormstalker blog is highly recommended and the Tornado History
Project website is a marvel to cruise around. If you click on the tornado
symbols, it will show you death and injury statistics. The table feature will
summarized outbreak statistics for you. There’s also some vintage footage from
the Worcester tornado out on YouTube, if you’re into that kind of thing.
References
- "There Was Nothing Normal About America’s Freakish Winter Weather,” Brian K.Sullivan, Aprile 10, 2017, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-10/there-was-nothing-normal-about-america-s-freakish-winter-weather
- “25 Deadliest U.S. Tornadoes,” NOAA, http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/killers.html
- “84 Minutes, 94 Lines: the 1953 Worcester Tornado,” New Worcester Spy, http://newworcesterspy.net/84-minutes-94-lives-the-1953-worcester-tornado/
- “June 7-9, 1953 – The Flint-Worcester Outbreak,” Stormstalker Blog, https://stormstalker.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/flint-worcester-outbreak/
- “History of Tornado Forecasting,” NOAA, http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/magazine/tornado_forecasting/
- “U.S. Tornado Climatology,” NCEI/NOAA,
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information/extreme-events/us-tornado-climatology
