Deadly tornado sprung up, killed four before forecasters could even see it

Glenn Coin | By Glenn Coin | The Post-Standard
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on July 13, 2014 at 4:00 AM, updated July 14, 2014 at 11:43 AM
"I remember thinking that was an impressive storm even by Oklahoma standards."

Smithfield, N.Y. -- The tornado that killed four people Tuesday happened so fast nobody saw it coming.

The tornado popped up just below a 1,400-foot ridge in central Madison County about 7:02 p.m. In four minutes, it was over.

It takes the National Weather Service radar five minutes to make a complete scan of the horizon.

And so the deadliest tornado in New York since at least 1950 hit so fast and with such force that forecasters barely had time to see it, let alone issue a warning.

"It showed up (on radar) very close to the time it actually hit, if not shortly thereafter," said Barbara Watson, director of the Binghamton weather service office, where the radar is located. "It was already happening."

The speed and destructiveness of the Madison County tornado shows how nature's force and unpredictability can overwhelm our best efforts to predict it.

Oddly, the thunderstorm that spawned the tornado in Smithfield Tuesday wasn't even the one that worried forecasters the most. They were watching a storm bearing down on Syracuse that was actually spinning - a clear sign of danger.

"The storm that went through Syracuse early in the day had very, very strong rotation with it, and was the type of thunderstorm you expect to see a significant tornado from," said Brian Tang, an atmospheric sciences professor at SUNY Albany who tracked the storms that day. "But it didn't produce a tornado. It's maddening to some degree for the forecasters."

Even the operations chief at the national Storm Prediction Center was watching the storm heading toward Syracuse. Bill Bunting, looking at his radar screen in Norman, Okla., saw a familiar pattern.

"It's the kind of storm you see in the plains on a day when we have a fairly high tornado risk," Bunting said. "I remember thinking that was an impressive storm even by Oklahoma standards."

Ultimate warning issued

Weather service forecasters in Binghamton were so worried about that storm that at 5:39 p.m. they issued a tornado warning - the ultimate warning that means either a tornado has been sighted or is imminent. That warning went through 6:45 p.m. and covered Onondaga County and the northwestern part of Madison County. It didn't apply to Smithfield.

Just before 6 p.m., the weather service said the "possible tornadic storm" was getting stronger.

That storm roared through Syracuse just after 6 p.m. and did considerable damage in the city and East Syracuse. The weather service later determined that was a macroburst, a severe storm with straight winds of up to 85 mph. It caused damage along its 50-mile path to Trenton Falls, in Oneida County. It didn't produce the expected tornado, though.

That storm was one of many that bounced along a ragged line running from southwest to northeast. In all, that line of storms produced five tornadoes in New York - four in Central New York and one in Warren County.

The Smithfield tornado, with swirling winds up to 135 mph, was the most powerful. It obliterated two mobile homes, killing a mother, her 4-month-old baby and an older female relative. A few hundred yards away, the tornado tore a three-story house from its foundation and hurled it across a street. One man and his dog died in that house.

Then the tornado, moving at 50 mph, tumbled 1,000 feet down the north side of the ridge and vanished as quickly as it had appeared. It burned itself out in less than four minutes.

That's the nature of tornadoes in the Northeast, Tang said. Tornadoes in the Great Plains are more powerful, but they also travel greater distances, giving people in their path more time to seek shelter.

The Smithfield tornado was unusual in that it was what's called a "spin-up" tornado.

"The typical way of getting a tornado is from what we call a supercell, which is essentially a big storm that is rotating," Watson said. "The tornado descends out of that storm, and you can see that rotation on the radar."

The Smithfield tornado, by contrast, sprung from the ground up.

"That's a different type of tornado," Watson said. "They're not usually as strong as what struck the Smithfield area."

They're also harder to spot on radar. The radar that scans Central New York is at the Binghamton airport, and it peers into the sky at a 0.5-degree angle. Add that to the curvature of the earth, Watson said, and by the time that radar beam crosses Madison County it's several thousand feet in the air.

The Smithfield ridge where the tornado hit is 1,400 feet high.

"Favorable" day for tornadoes

Forecasters knew early Tuesday that New York would be clobbered by high winds and possible tornadoes. The national Storm Prediction Center said the area was at moderate risk for severe thunderstorms - something that only happens a couple times a year in New York. In the Binghamton weather service office, Watson beefed up staffing, bringing
in eight meteorologists that evening instead of the usual two or three.

"What we did know was that July 8 was a day that was very favorable to severe weather and tornadoes in Central New York," Tang said.

The victims of the tornado knew there were thunderstorm warnings. The fiancé of Kimberly Hilliard, who died with her infant, sent her a text about 6:15 p.m. telling her to watch out for the storm. A sister of Arnie Allen, who died in the home tore from its foundations, called about 5 p.m. to alert him to the approaching storms.

And the residents of a house next door hunkered in the basement while the storm slammed debris into the side of their house, Watson said.

It's still not clear why the storm in Smithfield, and not the one in Syracuse, spawned the deadly tornado.

"It's one of the curiosities of atmospheric science," Tang said. "It's the nature of the beast."
