An anomalously warm and humid air mass was over eastern New York April 27th and 28th. Temperatures were 15 to 25 degrees above normal. A warm front lifted north of the region on Wednesday, April 27th with an area of heavy showers and embedded thunderstorms. This front became stationary near the Saint Lawrence River Valley and northern New England. A disturbance in the upper levels of the atmosphere and an area of low pressure moving towards the Great Lakes Region focused another round of showers and thunderstorms that impacted the western and central Mohawk Valley, Adirondack region, and the Upper Hudson River Valley including the Lake George Region late Wednesday afternoon into the early evening, April 27th.
Another wave of low pressure moved into the eastern Great Lakes Region Thursday morning, April 28th. This low intensified as it approached and had strong upper level support favorable for strong to severe thunderstorms. A supercell thunderstorm produced a tornado that touched down in southern Herkimer County producing damage in Frankfort early in the morning. Severe thunderstorms produced damaging winds north and west of the Capital Region during the morning hours. Very heavy rainfall was associated with the storms.
Lightning strikes started fires in a couple locations. The Mayfield Presbyterian Church in Fulton County was destroyed and the Stuyvesant Reformed Church in Columbia County suffered minimal damage.| |On June 10th, The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced that federal disaster assistance had been made available to the state of New York to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the area struck by storms, flooding, tornadoes, and straight-line winds during the period of April 26 to May 8, 2011. This includes the counties of Hamilton, Herkimer, and Warren in east central New York.