What a year
AWESOME PICS!!!
In a couple of your photos, I can see the circular pattern to the felled trees. Absolutely amazing. These pics confirm my posted hunch that we'd have an interesting tornado season here in New England, back in May or early June, but I still couldn't imagine that kind of damage happening in New England even though I knew it has happened before -- a long time ago.
And August isn't even here yet -- the usual "best chance" for tornadoes in New England.
This is the second tornado at the lake in less than a week. I heard enough people report last week's suspected funnel cloud was definitely rotating after it passed Gilford. There was one poster on this forum who reported seeing falling debris (bits of tree) after it passed Mt. Major, which wouldn't surprise me. That would indicate it touched down, however briefly, making it a tornado instead of just a funnel cloud.
And radar later detected rotation in the storm, resulting in the tornado warning southeast of the lake. But by that time it was too late -- no one down there even saw a funnel cloud. The warnings on that storm were way behind schedule. My location didn't even get a severe t-storm warning until the severe part of the storm had passed.
Therefore, I am going to call the storm of a week ago a tornado on the basis that it most likely couldn't have avoided touching down in the Belknap Mountains somewhere, which is about when the radar would've picked up the rotation. It would've been a few minutes until the tornado warning was issued, by which time the storm was halfway to Dover already (and that's about when the warning was actually issued.) My opinion isn't official. Only the NWS opinion is, and so it will likely never be confirmed as either a funnel cloud or a tornado. We all know what we saw, and therefore as far as I'm concerned we have had two tornadoes within a week of each other here at the lake.
It would be a good idea for everyone to review tornado safety rules since there are so many myths and legends out there. It would also be a good idea for everyone to review or learn disaster preparedness skills and be ready to help neighbors. These pictures show that it would be better to have those skills and not need them, than to need them and not have them. 90% of it is just mental -- looking at pics like this and imagining it happening in your neighborhood, asking yourself what you would/could do. The other 10% of it is learning skills you don't already have, making sure you have a really good chainsaw, realizing that you can't use it on trees that are or may be touching electric lines, having your important documents in a safe place or places...etc.
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