EF0 tornado, Somers, Connecticut, July 18, 2021

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

EF0

Date

July 18, 2021

Touchdown

5:11 PM CDT (22:11 UTC)

Lifted

5:18 PM CDT (22:18 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

1.9 miles (3.1 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$45,000

County

Not recorded

Touchdown point

41.976, -72.447

Lift-off point

42.000, -72.429

Record number

2107181611-01

A relatively stationary front meandered across southern New England on the 17th and 18th while low pressure slowly moved along the front. At upper levels, an upper low was moving slowly eastward from the Great Lakes. With very moisture-laden air in place across the region, the result was heavy rain and flash flooding. In addition, there were rounds of severe thunderstorms and even a weak tornado in northern Connecticut. Rainfall totals ranged from 3.0 to 5.6 inches in northern Connecticut and western and central Massachusetts. Mainly 1.0 to 2.0 inches fell in Rhode Island and eastern Massachusetts.

In Somers, a weak tornado touched down in the evening. Amateur radio operators followed up on a tip from a trained Skywarn spotter via social media and then uncovered many reports. We then spoke with Somers Fire Department officials, an eyewitness who observed the tornado, and viewed several online videos. The following information summarizes all of these reports.||The tornado touched down on Colonial Drive, then tracked to the north-northeast, impacting Lake Drive just south of Shady Lake, Kibee Drive, a portion of Main Street (Route 190), Battle Street, and ended in the vicinity of Hickory Hill Drive. This was a path length of 1.9 miles. The approximate path width was 75 yards. Damage photos led to estimates of maximum wind speeds of 75 to 80 mph, which put this on the mid to upper range of the EF-0 category of the Enhanced Fujita Scale. The time, based on radar, fire department logs, and an eyewitness account, was from 611 PM to 618 PM EDT. ||Several large pine trees were downed on Colonial Drive and two cars were destroyed by the falling trees. Approximately 19 trees were snapped, twisted, and uprooted on Lake Drive. A resident of Lake Drive heard a loud whirring noise and observed the tops of trees flying by the house. Shingles were missing on a house next door. A playscape was lifted up and landed approximately 50 feet away. On Main Street, a small corner of a roof was exposed, with additional damage along the length of the gutter. Farther to the northeast, a few large oak trees were snapped on Hickory Hill Drive. ||This storm was low-topped and did not produce any lightning...only heavy rain. However high humidity and just enough wind shear aloft were sufficient to cause this isolated spin-up.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:49 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

The Boston radar (KBOX), 108 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:10 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2021 tornado in ConnecticutEvery tornado in Connecticut since 1950Warnings in force in Connecticut nowThe forecast where you are

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.