Tornado In Addison County, Vermont, And The Low Down On Vermont Tornadoes

In a still shot from Levi Barrett's video of Monday's tornado
in Addison Vermont, you can just make out a car accidentally
driving into the twister as debris flies overhead.

As you've heard on the news by now, the National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont has confirmed that an EF-1 tornado touched down in Addison, Vermont Monday evening. 

Interestingly, the Addison tornado is the only one to be so far reported yesterday anywhere in the United States. The last tornado in Vermont before this, in Middlebury, Vermont in March, 2021, was also the nation's lone tornado that day. 

Tornadoes are pretty much always weak in Vermont, and this one was no exception. It was on the ground for only about two minutes, covering a mile of territory. 

Of course, even weak tornadoes are dangerous, and this one is no exception. It collapsed a metal structure, forcibly bent a street sign and tore down many trees and branches. Though no injuries were reported, the tornado crossed both Routes 22A and Route 17, so anyone caught in it could have been hurt.

In fact, video of the tornado appears to show a car accidentally driving into it as trees collapsed or blew apart around it. 

The video, shot by Levi Barrett, is fascinating. Although the tornado is clearly on the ground in the video, the condensation funnel isn't fully coming into contact with the surface. But it definitely appears to be a multi-vortex tornado, meaning you can see little mini tornadoes in the main twister circulation.

I associate multi-vortex tornadoes with much stronger systems in the Midwest, but as you can see, they happen with weaker storms. 

Also, to the best of my knowledge, this is the only video that exists of a tornado in Vermont. 

It's hard to describe a typical tornado in Vermont because they don't happen very often, but this one had the characteristics of the kind of thing you do see in New England from time to time. I warm front moved north through the state Monday.  

There's some evidence that the Addison tornado was
multi-vortex, meaning it had little tornadoes within
the main circulation. In this still from Levi Barrett's 
video, you can make out a skinny little funnel
descending from the main funnel 

Just south of the warm front, humid winds blew from the south. But the presence of the warm front caused winds to change direction with height. Even though the parent storm was small in size and lacked lightning, it was still capable of producing a tornado because of that spin in the atmosphere. 

In these ultra-humid summer situations that come without other ingredients to produce tornadoes, you can still get brief spinups that can cause some havoc. 

On Monday, there was almost a rare  case of more than one tornado touching down in Vermont on the same day, which hasn't happened in decades. But the idea of two Vermont tornadoes in the Green Mountain State didn't quite come to be.   

As I noted in a previous post, there was convincing radar images of a possible tornado around Marlboro and West Brattleboro around 10 p.m. Monday night. Local National Weather Service offices are responsible for deciding whether to investigate storm damage to determine whether it was a tornado or something else that caused it.

Marlboro and West Brattleboro are covered by the National Weather Service office in Albany, New York. I reached out to the Albany NWS office about this. They said there was indeed mid-level rotation, meaning the winds were spinning pretty vigorously several thousand feet above the surface. But there were no damage reports out of this area, so the wannabe tornado very likely did not touch down.  

I also did not see signs on radar images that anything in southeastern Vermont was flinging debris into the air. So, Albany meteorologists decided not to investigate, which is a perfectly reasonable conclusion, in my opinion.  

Storm chasers also found a storm with significant rotation yesterday in Hartford, New York, just over the border from Pawlet, Vermont.  While it's doubtful a tornado touched down, one could have in the remote, hilly terrain near Pawlet, for all we know. 

With Monday's confirmed tornado in Addison, Vermont, it seems the Green Mountain State has gotten back into the groove of seeing its average one tornado per year.  Of course, we had that infamous March, 2021 Middlebury tornado, which is the only twister known to have ever touched down in March. 

The Middlebury tornado was rare in that it caused at least two injuries. Tornado injuries are rare in Vermont, and I know of no recorded deaths from tornadoes in the Green Mountain State.

Another tornado, packing winds of up to 110 mph touched down in Windham in August, 2020. That tornado ended a twister drought of sorts in Vermont. It was the first tornado the Green Mountain State had seen in eight years. 

Also, in the past few years, there have been tornadoes very close to Vermont. On May 16 of this year, a tornado that was videoed hit Charlestown, New Hampshire, just a mile or two from Springfield, Vermont. 

On June 21, 2021, a supercell thunderstorm that originated in and caused damage in northern New York then moved into Quebec produced a tornado just 14 miles north of Alburgh, Vermont. 

There has been an uptick in the number of tornadoes in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic States in the past decade or two. However, there are so few tornadoes in Vermont that it's pretty much impossible to discern any kind of real trend.