‘Tornadic’ Storm

‘Tornadic’ Storm

Hannah and Ethan Johnson of Greenhouse Avenue in Randolph stand amidst their family corn patch, flattened in a counter-clockwise circular pattern by winds that blew through Monday evening. (Herald / Bob Eddy)

Rips through Randolph

A fleeting red fireball in Fay Sherman’s living room; an icy layer of marble-sized hail; rain, thunder and lightning; and swirling winds that toppled trees, laid down plants in a circular pattern, and sent raindrops bouncing off pavement in five-foot-high waves.

Just what was it that clipped through Randolph Village—in two or three waves—Monday evening?

Conor Lahiff, meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Burlington, said yesterday that the storm probably wasn’t a tornado, but "it may well have been tornadic at some point."

Lahiff was on duty, "working the radar," Monday night at about 7 p.m. when he spotted a circular wind pattern on the border between Lincoln and Granville. At that point, Lahiff issued a tornado warning for Hancock and Granville, which some area residents heard in radio and TV reports.

It was probably that system that hit Randolph a short time later, he said this week.

"There certainly was a lot of wind," Lahiff said Tuesday. "Whether it was a tornado is hard to say."

Band of Destruction

This week, Randolph residents reported storm damage—and fierce, but capricious winds—that occurred in a band, stretching from Mason Road and Elm Street, to the north, and down to the junction of Route 12 and Beanville Road.

Cassandra Mears of School Street said she wasn’t sure whether it was wind or a lightning strike that sent two ash trees down onto the family’s sugarhouse.

"I heard one big bang," she said. She had assumed that it was lightning hitting the rail-side silos next door, but maybe it hit the trees, she said. Luckily the two ash trees landed mostly on a woodpile, sparing the sugarhouse.

The winds were incredible, Mears said, but oddly, they didn’t disturb some loose pieces of roofing tin resting atop a dog kennel in the yard.

Over on Lodestar Road, off Wallace Hill, Mears’ dad, Fay Sherman, was having a bizarre experience: "It was just like a big red ball in the living room," he reported this week.

The brief, electrical phenomenon appeared to come in through the window and hovered briefly before his television, Sherman said.

"There was no noise," he said yesterday. "I didn’t think too much of it."

A concentrated zone of damage stretched from the Dwinell/Nazarova residence at the Hillside Farm on the Mason Road, down to several residences on Greenhouse Avenue.

Susanna Nazarova said the storm, which started with rain and lots of wind out of the north, suddenly shifted to hail. The top of a cottonwood tree on their property was snapped off in the wind, and landed on Bossie Road.

The wind sent down 10 trees at Ron and Sandy Rillings’ Elm Street residence, while, across the street, a big tree fell onto the garage at the home of Maria and Robert Piasecki.

It was a memorable sort of welcome-to-the-neighborhood moment for the Piasecki family, who had just moved in over the weekend.

Robert Piasecki said the storm started off as a typical "New England summer thunderstorm" and then "suddenly it took on a whole different dimension," with extraordinary north-northwest winds. It was 7:45 p.m. when the tree went crashing down, following "a loud crack," he said.

The roof on the garage will have to be replaced.

A short way south, a corn patch by the Greenhouse Avenue home of Justin and Gus Johnson was flattened in a circular pattern, and a tree was snapped off at the Howe home, across the street.

On Route 12A

Out on Route 12A, at about 7 p.m. Monday, the home of Gene and Bea Downs took a direct hit from the storm, when a portion of an immense pine tree winged a corner of their mobile home, damaging the porch roof, and falling directly on their 1998 Jeep and 2002 Ford Ranger pickup.

Surveying the damage the next morning, Gene said the couple had just finished watching the evening news on TV, when all of a sudden, it got very dark and began to hail, and there was high wind and a lot of noise as the tree came down.

"It was over pretty quickly, and at least we weren't hurt," said Bea, who was on the porch when the tree fell, and was quite understandably frightened for a minute. "We've got insurance on the vehicles and our landlord said he'd get our home fixed."

Down on the Beanville Road farm of Gail and Chris Billings, a "swirling" wind, from the west and south, drove rain into the open "run-under" shelters for their oxen.

Gail Billings said she also saw an area of tall grasses flattened in a circular pattern.

Central Vermont Public Service Corp. spokesman Steve Costello said the storm knocked out power to 507 customers, in Bethel, Braintree, Randolph, and Royalton.

Crews were out immediately, and the last customer was back on before midnight, he said.

After reviewing photographs and reports from this area, meteorologist Conor Lahiff concluded yesterday from Burlington that there had been "some sort of spin-up down there, whether it was just a downburst that had some rotation to it, a tornado, or just a funnel cloud which never really touched the ground.

"Without coming down to assess that damage, either by air or by car, we won't really know what happened," he said.

He said Vermont, over the past 30 years, has had an average of one tornado reported per year, with an unusually high number of five "small ones" reported last year.

By Sandy Cooch