It wasn't a monster like Tuscaloosa or Joplin but Springfield, Mass was hit with a twister today.

I did a stop off highway 2 in Mass this afternoon. Left there a little after 4:30. I'm coming south on I-91 around 5:30 and maybe 5 miles before Springfield I run into some heavy rain and some hail. It's not all that bad but 15 or 20 cars pull off on the shoulder to wait it out. I turned west on the Mass Pike and maybe 5 miles west of Springfield I saw a strange cloud formation to my right. Couldn't have been the twister because I was an hour late and too far north - they said it hit the south side of the city around 4:30.

About as close as I'd like to be just the same.

By the by, is the Petro just west of Syracuse one of your favorite truck stops too? I'm way around back on the gravel. Quiet and peaceful.

 

But, you might have seen the second one that hit the north side an hour or so later.

 

I just saw some video of it on CNN. I guess those newschopper pilots were brave (or stupid) enough to be NORTH of it and facing south, cuz the tornado "I" saw was heading right to LEFT across the river!

Either way, looks like they got pounded!

 

That Petro is xt41 Waterloo/Clyde I go by there every night about 1600 & 0100 That gravel area seems to attract a lot of the garbage haulers(phew) when i've been there.

 

It may not have been a mile wide like some of the recent one's but I bet it was a major tornado. Some of the pics seem to indicate at least a 3. Brick apartment buildings have whole sides ripped wide open in some of the pics I've seen. Thus far, very lucky that only 4 people have died in this round in a very heavily populated area in the NE. Could have been worse with the time the storms hit.

 

Well looking around this morning I do see quite a few covered wagons. Are they garbage haulers? I always wondered what kind of freight a setup like that would be especially good for. insert :not_too_bright: emoticon here :lol: At least I'm far away from them but damn man, this place just lost it's appeal.

Yeah it looks like at least one more twister was spotted. You know it wasn't really raining all that hard. A few miles north of Springfield I had the wipers on high and slowed a bit but it wasn't bad at all. Well before I turned onto the Mass Pike I had turned my wipers down the low setting and never had to turn them back up. 25 or 30 miles west of Springfield I was back in the sunlight.

 

If you look at the way Springfield is laid out, a 5 like AL and MO got would have killed hundreds. For them, it would have been worse than either AL or MO. I didn't know that MASS ever got tornadoes, but watching the news this morning, they said 2 to 3 a year for that area. With 2 twisters in one system, does that count for their 2 for the year?

 

The Pucker factor for the folks on the bridge must have been an EF-10:eek2::eek2::eek2::eek2:

Dailymotion - Tornado Touches Down In Springfield, Mass. - a News & Politics video

 

Every state in the US is ripe for a tornado, even Alaska.

 

Interesting bit I learned recently, probably would have known, but... never thought about:

A "newsperson" asked a world weather expert, during a discussion about why this year in America has been so bad, whether Europe had ever had such an outbreak. His answer? Europe RARELY would have a tornado because they don't have the same weather patterns (jet stream location) in the same proximity to bodies of water with similar temperatures to the ones that surround our country (continental supersphere... is that the word?)

I haven't googled tornadoes in Europe.... but, I think I understood what he was saying, and I take him at his word.

Obviously, Europe doesn't have tornados because they are all SOCIALISTS! And have less "hot air" than we do here in America! :lol:

J/K..... really, I thought that was interesting.