It WAS a Tornado in Bridgeport on June 24th

A strong line of thunderstorms affected the south and western parts of Connecticut on the 24th (a quick look at my twitter, @Bleet shows just a hint of all the legwork I did that day). I kept a close eye as the system that ripped through and ravaged the greater Chicago area pushed its way quickly through our state of Connecticut, bringing in minor rain, and extremely high winds. What made it even worse was that there was already rotational wind shear in place, brought by air moving off of the Atlantic Ocean / Long Island Sound at the low level, fueling the system, and high level, high speed winds brought by the Jet stream. All that was needed was a force to lift that rotation vertically, and give us a tornado. Then, we finally got that updraft needed, and there was strong proof via radar that there is or will be a tornado. At 2:20 PM, a Tornado Warning was issued.

The National Weather Service surveyed the damage today, and about 27 hours after the event, the NWS confirmed that an EF1 tornado touched down in Bridgeport at approximately 2:30 PM. It was estimated to have winds at around 100 MPH (the fastest since a 125 MPH gust from Hurricane Bob in 1991), a 100 yard swath, and traveled only for 0.15 miles. At roughly that time, there was a 75 MPH gust at Sikorsky Airport in neighboring Stratford. Damage directly associated with the tornado was limited to a storefront's facade being stripped off, tree tops sheered off, windows blown in, and a peculiar piece of metal debris wrapped around a fire hydrant.

It honestly didn't surprise me that this storm did spawn a tornado, a bit a short lived. At 2:23, three minutes after the tornado warning was issued, this is what the base radical velocity looked like over Bridgeport. (Base Radical Velocity is watching the movement of precipitation, negative if it's moving towards the radar station, positive when moving away, RF [pink] aka Range Folding meaning the station can't determine which way it's moving if at all). If you look just North-East of Bridgeport, you'll see a notably large batch of precipitation moving one direction, and one sharp point where it's moving away embedded within it. That usually represents rotation, and it's moderately likely that a tornado may spawn. A mere five minutes later (below), it was gone as the main part of the cell moved over water.

This system devastated the area, downing numerous amounts of trees, collapsing a building in Bridgeport, and knocking out power to over 16,000 customers at its peak in just Bridgeport, Stratford, and Trumbull combined. Both Bridgeport and Stratford declared a state of emergency. It was so bad in Bridgeport that Governor Rell visited the area to inspect damage, and the city had to enact a curfew to ensure safety. Fortunately, as of this writing, there have not been any serious injuries involved with that storm that affected the area on the 24th. (The current NWS preliminary report states that there were three injuries associated with the tornado, but I have reason to believe that they aren't very severe, life threatening injuries.)

Video Footage of the Bridgeport EF1 tornado on June 26th, 2010

Despite all that, neighboring towns Fairfield, Easton and Trumbull only saw straight line wind damage, no proof of "twisting" that would show a tornado struck the area... but even then, they saw notable damage (Trumbull had approximately 3 thousand customers without power alone)... and yet, if you look at the eastern counties, they barely received any rain at all! Big difference across the state.

This was the first major storm of the summer, and the first confirmed tornado so far for 2010. Hopefully we won't have to deal with anything this substantial for the future.

Footer Fun Fact: The last time Bridgeport had a tornado was in 1876, almost 134 years ago. It was in Northern Bridgeport and had a swath of over 300 yards, triple of the width of the tornado on the 24th.