Remembering the June 1st, 2011 Massachusetts Tornado Outbreak - 2nd Anniversary

6/1/2011 Tornado, Springfield MA

Below are excerpts from an email we received today from the ARES SKYWARN Coordinator in Massachusetts (links to video footage and tornado summary are included at the end):

We have reached the second-year anniversary of a historic day in Southern New England Weather History. The June 1st, 2011 Massachusetts Tornado Outbreak will be a day long remembered in weather history. This message includes a video collage of the June 1st, 2011 Massachusetts tornado outbreak, updates, and lessons learned that apply today.

The June 1st, 2011 event was forecasted by the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman Oklahoma as far as 5 days out. This is very rare for New England to be in a convective outlook past 3 days. The outlook of 'Slight Risk' for severe weather would continue right up through June 1st. As we got into June 1st, a fast moving area of rapidly developing severe thunderstorms ahead of the warm front affected portions of Southern New Hampshire and Northeast Massachusetts producing large hail. These storms quickly moved out of area and were a sign of things to come and how explosive the atmosphere was on June 1st. Abundant sunshine and rapid heating and destabilization coupled with extremely strong wind shear values set the stage for a historic major severe weather outbreak in Massachusetts and other parts of New England. The Storm Prediction Center in Norman Oklahoma issued a Mesoscale Convective Discussion highlighting the need for Tornado Watches for much of New York and New England. The Tornado Watches would be issued and supercell severe thunderstorms would move into Southern New England.

Initially the supercells produced very large hail including hail slightly over 4" in diameter in East Windsor Massachusetts, Berkshire County, which may potentially set the new record for the Commonwealth as far as hail size but no tornadic or wind damage activity through 400 PM. This is when the supercell began to take shape in Western Hampden County Massachusetts and set the stage for the large, long track EF-3 Tornado that traversed the area from Westfield to Charlton Massachusetts for a 39-mile long damage path and was on the ground for 70 minutes. Three smaller tornadoes occurred in Western and Central Massachusetts from additional supercells moving through the area. Another area of supercells went through Northern Worcester County into Middlesex and Suffolk Counties producing Golf Ball Sized hail and pockets of wind damage all the way into the Metro Boston area.

The near real-time reporting of the large EF-3 tornado touchdown with initial preliminary reports in Westfield, the actual spotting of the EF3 Tornado by Western Massachusetts SKYWARN Coordinator, Ray Weber-KA1JJM, and the amazing remote webcam footage from WWLP-TV channel 22 in Springfield Massachusetts helped to tell people that not only was this a radar detected tornado but that it was definitely on the ground and doing significant damage. It is quite likely that many lives were saved by this near realtime reporting of the tornado being on the ground.


Many SKYWARN Spotters reported severe weather conditions despite being at risk from these powerful supercells. We are forever grateful for the reporting that helped save lives. The outpouring of damage assessment pictures and videos and reports near and after the event was unprecedented. This clearly helped Non-Governmental Organizations and local and state emergency management perform their duties to try and bring as many resources to bear on the significant path of destruction carved out by the tornado outbreak.

For the victims, today is likely a painful reminder of what occurred and what loses they faced and in some cases are still recovering from in terms of property damage and possibly lives lost. For those not impacted by such a significant event as June 1st and not impacted severely by the likes of Irene, Sandy, the February 2013 Blizzard and Snowtober over the past two years, this is a reminder that we must all be prepared for these significant weather situations. . 

We hope this remembrance makes people never forget what happened on June 1st 2011 and remind ourselves again that we must remain prepared and vigilant especially here in New England where events such as June 1st can happen but on a low frequency basis. A June 1st 2011 video collage has been posted at our SKYWARN video page at video.nsradio.org with recordings of some of the Amateur Radio reports that came in through the network. Below is the NWS Taunton - Massachusetts Tornado Summary, the ARRL Story on the June 1st Tornado Outbreak, the NWS Taunton June 1st Local Storm Report and the Raw Storm log from the WX1BOX Amateur Radio Station.

NWS Taunton Massachusetts Tornado Summary:
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/sigevents/jun01_2011_summary.php

NWS Taunton Local Storm Reports 6/1/11:
http://www.wx1box.org/local/lsr_6_1_11.txt

Respectfully Submitted,

Robert Macedo (KD1CY)
ARES SKYWARN Coordinator
Eastern Massachusetts ARES Section Emergency Coordinator