Unseasonably warm temperatures reached near record levels for February. A high reading of 72 degrees was recorded in downtown Springfield at 12:24 PM.
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Deaths and injuries are direct and indirect together, as the offices filed them. Damage is property and crops in the dollars of the year, not adjusted for inflation, and only where an office estimated it.
The episode as NWS BOX wrote it up.
Unseasonably warm temperatures reached near record levels for February. A high reading of 72 degrees was recorded in downtown Springfield at 12:24 PM. A rare out-of-season outbreak of thunderstorms, some severe, moved east-northeast across western and central Massachusetts by mid-afternoon. A total of 2,500 electric customers lost power in the western part of the state. Most of the outages were brief.
The national radar mosaic for the moment the first event began.
7 thunderstorm wind, 1 heat, 1 strong wind. Local standard time, as filed.
A peak wind gust to approximately 60 mph was reported in Westfield and wires were knocked down in Holyoke during a severe thunderstorm. A peak wind gust to 96 mph was recorded by a research wind turbine atop Mount Tom.
A peak wind gust to 60 mph was reported in Northampton.
A severe thunderstorm brought a peak wind gust to 60 mph at Barre at 2:20 PM and trees and wires were reported down in Hardwick between 2:22 PM and 2:30 PM.
A peak wind gust to 62 mph was recorded by the automated weather station at Fitchburg during a severe thunderstorm. Quite a few power lines were reported down throughout the city of Fitchburg, but power outages were brief.
A gust to 60 mph was reported in Shirley.
Trees and wires were reported down in Princeton.
The temperature at Boston's Logan International Airport reached 66 degrees, setting a record for the date. The old record was 63 degrees in 1990.
Trees and wires were reported blown down and a chimney was knocked down in Dracut at approximately 3:00 PM.
Strong west-northwest winds in the wake of a strong cold front brought a peak wind gust to 56 mph at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton.
After NWS Directive 10-1605, the rules offices file Storm Data by.
Every storm in Massachusetts in 1997Every state in 1997This day in weather historyWarnings in Massachusetts, February 1997
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database, compiled from the National Weather Service’s monthly Storm Data. Complete through 2026-06; NCEI adds each month about 75 days after it ends and revises past years a few times a year. Rebuilt 2026-09-24. Each event’s entry at NCEI: 5593091, 5593092, 5593093, 5593094, 5593095, 5593096, 5593097, 5592133, 5592134.