EF0 tornado, South Albany, Vermont, May 29, 2012

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

May 29, 2012

Touchdown

3:25 PM EDT (19:25 UTC)

Lifted

3:26 PM EDT (19:26 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10,000

County

Orleans County

Touchdown point

44.697, -72.261

Lift-off point

44.693, -72.259

Record number

1205291325-01

A warm front moved across Vermont during the morning hours of May 29th, which lead to numerous thunderstorms with heavy rain, damaging lightning and some isolated large hail and strong winds. Some of these thunderstorms deposited up to 2 inches of rainfall in portions of north-central and northeast Vermont.||A warm, humid and unstable air mass was draped across the region in the afternoon with an approaching cold front from Ontario, Canada. Numerous thunderstorms developed ahead of the cold front during the afternoon crossing New York into Vermont. There were numerous reports of hail greater than an inch in diameter, damaging winds, along with a confirmed EF0 tornado in West Glover VT. ||Some of these storms trained across the same areas, including those that witnessed nearly two inches of rain earlier in the day. The end result was flash flooding in portions of north-central, northeast Vermont and Addison county with radar estimated storm total rainfall of 3 to 5 inches.

Tornado touched down near a private residence on Beach Hill road and tracked eastward for approximately 1/3 mile. Maximum width was 100 yards. Damage was limited to a chimney of the private residence and approximately 45 trees.

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

13 minutes of warning. NWS BTV issued a tornado warning for this county at 19:12 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 19:54 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:26 UTC and running to 22:38 UTC.

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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:43 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 Burlington radar (KCXX), 75 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:26 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 2012 tornado in VermontEvery tornado in Vermont since 1950Warnings in force in Vermont nowThe forecast where you are

4 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.