Wild weather in southern New England Saturday night brought heavy wind gusts to the Vineyard and three confirmed tornadoes in Connecticut and Rhode Island that uprooted trees, snapped power poles and tossed heavy equipment and small buildings around, causing property damage but no reported injuries.
Around dinnertime Saturday Islanders received blaring emergency alerts on their cell phones and radios warning of a tornado in the area and advising people to take shelter.
These were the first November tornadoes since 1950 for Connecticut and Rhode Island, according to the National Weather Service, which began issuing storm advisories across New England before sunrise.
Massachusetts has not had a November tornado since 1971, the weather service announced on Twitter Sunday.
Saturday began with National Weather Service advisories of potential thunderstorms that could spawn more severe weather, though forecasts suggested the area of most impact would be in the western part of the region.
By 2 p.m. a cold front was pushing into New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, states where a severe thunderstorm watch was already in effect, and some parts of New York State were experiencing hail.
The twisters arrived after sunset, with the first touching down in Plainfield, Conn. at 4:48 p.m., uprooting several trees before following a six-mile-long, 300-foot-wide path of intermittent contact with the ground until it reached Foster, R.I. just after 5 p.m., according to the weather service.
In Foster, the tornado ripped up more trees and moved a heavy farm trailer some 50 feet, according to the weather service, which estimated its wind speed at 80 m.p.h. — an EF-0 on the Enhanced Fujita scale of tornado severity.
The second tornado was both shorter and briefer, but more intense, an EF-1 with an estimated wind speed of 90 m.p.h. It emerged at 4:54 p.m. in Stonington, Conn. and expired about 5 p.m., 1.35 miles away in Westerly, R.I.
In those few minutes, the 300-foot-wide tornado snapped or uprooted multiple trees, sheared street signs off at their bases, lofted several trampolines — one of which wound up suspended from a power line about 20 feet above the ground — stripped shutters and guttering from buildings and demolished a metal shed, according to a damage survey from the National Weather Service.
Tornado three, another EF-0, laid a 1.5-mile track from North Kingstown, R.I. to Wickford, R.I. between about 5:18 p.m. and 5:24 p.m., snapping power poles and tree limbs along the way.
While no actual twisters were reported on the Vineyard, there was pelting rain and strong wind, with one Chilmark homeowner recording a gust of 91 miles per hour.
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