Thanks to Zach Tomaselli, a WeatherBrains listener, who writes…
“A couple weeks ago, we had a rare Tornado Outbreak up here in Maine. A total of 3 confirmed tornadoes touched down in the span of about an hour in the two most populated counties of Maine, York and Cumberland. Two of the Tornadoes were initially ranked EF1 and one of them was ranked EF0. One of the EF1 tornadoes may be upgraded to an EF2 in time after further assessment. There was little warning that these storms would turn tornadic and the SPC had us only under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch. It was very similar to what happened in Alabama on the day of the Yazoo City Tornado. The storms seemed weak and stationary over most of the state throughout the day, then some sort of boundary came along and pushed these storms East and as that happened they really strengthened. The individual supercells would pulse up and drop a tornado then quickly weaken.
Another cell would follow right behind the boundary the first cell left and pulse up, dropping another tornado in the same area. I forgot what you called it but the sun was down when these storms strengthened and it seems like something weird caused them to pulse up but again I forgot what you and Dr. Tim call it but it reminded me of that night in Alabama even though the Tornadoes were not as strong. I have some photos of the damage I will attach to the email. The local response was great. There was plenty of warning time. The local television meteorologists informed viewers that “this is the real deal” and nobody was killed. A couple people were injured when trapped inside their house for a while but other than that, the warning system worked well even up here in Maine where tornadoes are a rare thing especially near the populated coast.”
