‘Wild' weekend tornado outbreak rattles the Northeast
For the first time in recorded history, Connecticut residents dealt with tornado cleanup after Halloween. Tornadoes were confirmed in at least three states, including some tense video of one shot in Long Island, New York.
By Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Nov. 15, 2021 6:26 PM CET | Updated Nov. 16, 2021 11:11 AM CET
November wraps up what is considered the secondary severe weather season because historic outbreaks have occurred in the month.
A rare outbreak of November severe weather across parts of the Northeast resulted in at least nine tornadoes touching down in multiple states and caused tense moments along with some significant damage but no reported fatalities.
For the first time in more than 70 years, Connecticut residents dealt with tornado cleanup in November. Since record-keeping began in 1950, the state had never recorded a post-Halloween twister. On Saturday, the state dealt with not just its first November tornado but three others as well.
The day's strongest twister impacted the town of Stonington, located in the southeastern corner of the state near the Rhode Island border.
According to the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), the confirmed tornado reached EF1 strength, with peak winds topping out at 90 mph.
Throughout the small town of 934 people, several trees were uprooted, a metal shed was crushed by a falling tree and a trampoline was sent airborne, tangling itself in powerlines 20 feet in the air.
Storm chasers caught intense video showing debris thrown by a nearby tornado flying across a highway in Long Island, New York, on Nov. 13, 2021. (Twitter / Mark Doucet)
According to WFSB, multiple street signs were also snapped off in the town, while falling trees near Robinson road led to fires. No injuries were reported.
“It sounded like a freight train coming through," resident Justin Whalen told WFSB. "Down the street was on fire, where the tree had fallen onto the transformers and it was burning that up.”
NBC Connecticut reported that the basis for the EF1 rating was the crushed shed along with the instances of gutters and shutters being ripped off homes. The news outlet also reported that the state had never recorded a December tornado, making this weekend's twisters the latest in state history.
The other three tornadoes occurred in Cheshire, Branford and Plainfield, each of which was confirmed to be EF0 tornadoes.
The twister in Cheshire was the day's first tornado, and thus the record-breaker, as wind speeds from the tornado reached 75 mph and caused significant tree damage around 3:30 p.m., local time. According to the SPC report, several cars were crushed.
A strip mall in Shirley, New York, about 65 miles outside of New York City on Long Island's south shore sustained significant damage after severe weather broke out on Nov. 13, 2021.
AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist John Feerick said the outbreak of tornadoes was rare due to the meteorological conditions in the region.
"Saturday's tornado outbreak was a wild event for any month, but especially noteworthy considering it occurred in November," he said. "Usually you think of tornadoes occurring with very warm and humid air in place, but this was not the case Saturday, with highs only in the 60s."
A tornado was spotted in Long Island, New York, on Nov. 13 as it crossed the road.
Feerick added that the unique conditions that the tornadoes formed in are a testament to the amount of energy associated with the storm that worked its way through the Northeast over the weekend.
Elsewhere in the Northeast, the same system spewed more tornadoes in New York and Rhode Island on Saturday, including four that were confirmed in Long Island, east of New York City, where fierce winds sent trees smashing onto cars and left more than 12,000 customers without power,
according to WPIX.
A video posted on social media captured the intense moments from inside one vehicle amid the dangerous conditions in Suffolk County. The footage showed debris flying across Sunrise Highway as trees off to the side of the roadway bent at the whim of the twister.
In the neighborhood of Shirley, located on the south shore of Long Island, the strongest of the area's tornadoes wreaked havoc on a local shopping center.
According to Patch, building materials were strewn hundreds of yards across intersections and neighboring shopping centers due to straight-line winds that reached up to 75 mph.
Along with uprooting trees in the parking lot, the entire roof of a two-story home was "tossed as far as 150 yards," officials said. According to Patch, a section of the roof "actually impaled itself into the side of the neighboring house to the north and made such a strong impact that it skewed the vertical structure of that house."
Parts of the Shirley, New York, were severely damaged on Nov. 13, as a severe thunderstorm battered the Long Island community.
Throughout the country, tornado outbreaks are rarer in November than in other months, even in areas particularly prone to severe weather. AccuWeather National Reporter Tony Laubach, an experienced storm chaser, said November had been “pretty quiet” in terms of severe weather and tornadoes prior to this weekend. That was especially noteable since it followed an
extremely active month of October.
“Tornadoes are relatively rare because they only form when specific ingredients combine,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter said, adding that a tornado touching down in the Northeast during fall is even rarer, if not “unheard of.” He attributed that to the fact there is not typically enough atmospheric moisture — a factor critical for severe thunderstorm and tornado development — in the region that late in the year.
Summer and fall were unusually wet in the Northeast, a trend that AccuWeather meteorologists have linked with
an unusual marine heat wave off the East Coast, which was marked by above-normal water temperatures in the western Atlantic, just off the Northeast coast.
“These factors conspired with a potent disturbance leading to wild weather and quickly changing conditions on Saturday, including the historic number of tornadoes on Long Island, Connecticut and Rhode Island,” Porter explained.
Laubach did add, however, that outbreaks still have occurred in the month and, although rare, they can pack quite a punch.
“Although not that common, outbreaks can and have occurred in many areas east of the Rockies,” he said. “All the way to the East Coast.”
Connecticut residents can certainly attest to that. In Branford, located about 50 miles west of Stonington, the EF0 tornado touched down shortly before 4 p.m. and spewed 85-mph winds before the system strengthened ahead of its impacts in Stonington.
There, Stonington resident Cameron Goudailler told WFSB that he had never seen damage like that before.
"I hear a big loud crack, [then] the power cuts out," he said. "It was a total shock because even though hurricane [come] here, we never got anything that bad."
