Friday's Storm Was a Landphoon?
By Quincy Vagell on August 10, 2012, 9:00pm
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The storm that passed through Connecticut was a relatively rare phenomenom in the Northeast.
It is being considered a "landphoon", which is a term coined for a storm system that has tropical characteristics, but moves and develops over land.
It may be another day or so before the National Weather Service can conduct storm surveys to determine if any tornadoes actually ripped through Connecticut on Friday. Regardless, there was a very impressive storm that literally tracked from one end of the state to another.
An EF-0 tornado was confirmed in Ronkonkoma, N.Y. on Long Island. There, two separate Tornado Warnings were issued for the cell as it passed through the state.
When the storm moved over Long Island Sound, it was showing signs of rotation and a "comma head" type signature was showing up. This was clearly indicating some sort of mesoscale (small-scale) low pressure system.
The storm first "made landfall" in Guilford and tracked towards the north-northeast. There were numerous reports of trees down in Guilford.
Continuing northward, the storm then tracked into Durham and Middletown. At this point, there were strong signs of rotation on radar, but the National Weather Service office that covers Middlesex County (Upton, N.Y.) did not issue a Tornado Warning. Instead, a Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued.
The storm continued northward and moved into Portland and at this time, more damage reports started coming in.
As the storm moved into Glastonbury, which is in Hartford County, a Tornado Warning was immediately issued by the National Weather Service office out of Taunton, M.A. Damage across Glastonbury was particularly severe and even if a tornado is not confirmed, winds may have easily reached 70 MPH in gusts.
The system began to show signs of an eye at this point as it mvoed northward into Manchester. There were numerous reports of trees down in the city, which closed both directions of I-384 for some time.
Rotation was not as impressive on radar as the storm approached I-84 and moved northward into South Windsor and Vernon. With that said, there were still reports of some damage on those towns.
It is important to note that the "eye" feature was not a large tornado. In fact, rotation was detected along the western and southwestern "eye-wall". In systems like this, strong rotation can spin-off vorticies (tornadoes) around the main circulation.
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