Monday Storm Brought National Extremes: Va. Tornado, Northeast Floods, Michigan/W. Va Floods, Fatal Dust

Damage from a powerful tornado in Virginia Beach,
Virginia on Sunday. 

The wide ranging storm that hit the East Coast and Great Lakes yesterday caused all kinds of interesting weather, extremes and even destruction.  Some more weirdness is coming from this storm today, but it will be toned down somewhat from yesterday. 

Here in Vermont, we threaded the needle and mostly avoided the strongest winds and the heaviest rains, but the day evolved into an odd one with spells of warm sunshine mixed with very chilly downpours and blasts of pea-sized hail.

But that paled in comparison with other places, for sure. 

VIRGINIA TORNADO

The havoc Sunday with a strong, destructive tornado in Virginia Beach, Virginia. This twister was oddly strong for this neck of the woods. The National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia pegged it as an EF-3 with top winds of 145 mph. 

Unfortunately, it was at maximum intensity when it blew through the Chelsea neighborhood of Virginia Beach. Several large, well constructed homes lost roofs and second floors, and some were shifted off their foundations. Miraculously, no deaths were reported. 

Drone footage showed rows of houses with severe damage, while homes across the street appear almost totally intact. 

NYC FLOOD

The storm brought five or six inches of rain over the weekend to the New York City, area, which is more rain than usually falls over a whole month. 

As you'd expect, flooding was pretty widespread. Water blocked major roads, with video of cars struggling through deep water.  The water also swept into basement apartments. Unlike in Tropical Storm Ian back in 2021, no deaths were reported in these basement floods. The storm did cause the wall of a residential building in the Bronx to collapse, forcing evacuations. 

MAINE/NEW HAMPSHIRE WIND AND FLOOD

The Dixville, Maine Fire Company posted this photo of
serious flood damage on a town road Monday. 

The storm kept moving north into New England. As had been expected a fire hose of torrential rain and wind slammed into much of New Hampshire and southwestern Maine. 

Four to six inches of rain came down in eastern New Hampshire and southwestern Maine with this, so the flooding was pretty extensive here, too.

The flooding closed no fewer than three dozen main road, and probably a few hundred more real and smaller roads and streets in New Hampshire and Maine on Monday. Several buildings were flooded in Farmington, Maine, and other homes were damaged in scattered areas of Maine and eastern New Hampshire. 

Rushing water destroyed a parking lot for a retail complex in Skowhegan. Power went out to 68,000 customers as winds as high as 70 mph accompanied the downpours. 

MICHIGAN/WISCONSIN SNOWSTORM 

Cold air wrapping around the storm brought heavy snow to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and parts of northern Wisconsin.

The persistent north winds are also creating lake effect snows off to Lake Superior. The high terrain in the central Upper Peninsula could receive two to as much as three feet of snow by the time this is all over, probably this afternoon.

Marquette, Michigan reported a whopping 19.8 inches of snow Monday, easily its biggest May snowstorm on record. There was a report this morning of 25 inches of snow just outside our Marquette. Snow fell as far south as Green Bay, which reported 2.2 inches of new snow.

WEST VIRGINIA SNOWSTORM 

The core of the coldest air with this vast, virtually stalled low pressure system was actually to the south and west of Vermont, this morning, more toward Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. 

Dust blowing off farm fields cut visibility to near zero
along Interstate 55 in Illinois, causing a massive
pileup that killed six people and injured 37. 

That means it's cold enough for snow in the high elevations of West Virginia and there's LOTS of it. A rare winter storm warning is up for the mountains of West Virginia, with up to a foot of new snow expected in the highest elevations.

Already, a spot near Cherry Grove, West Virginia has reported 6.5 inches of new snow.  Photographs of snow drifts as much as waist deep.

Snow showers often happen in the high elevations of West Virginia during early May, but the magnitude of this storms is much larger than they're used to. 

FATAL ILLINOIS DUST 

On the southern and western periphery of this big storm, dry northwest winds have been blowing through much of the Plains and Midwest well south of the Great Lakes.

Monday, this turned tragic.  Fields are freshly plowed through vast areas of the Midwest, including Illinois, as farmers get ready to plant. Along Interstate 55, dry air allowed the surface of freshly plowed fields to dry out. Then, strong winds blew the dust in blinding clouds across Interstate 55. 

The tragic result was a series of pileups along a two-mile stretch of Interstate 55 that killed six people and injured 37.  At least 72 vehicles were involved in the crash. 

These farm field dust storms happen occasionally throughout the Midwest, but they don't often cause a disaster as big as this one.