Trio of Mass. tornadoes wrecked at least 200 buildings

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/06/officials_offer.html

Posted by John Ellement June 2, 2011 06:31 PM

At least 200 buildings were destroyed by tornadoes as they carved their deadly paths through Central and Western Massachusetts on Wednesday, hitting particularly hard in a group of eight or nine communities that included the city of Springfield, Governor Deval Patrick said this afternoon.

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http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1815

Record heat pushed northwards ahead of the cold front, with Newark, Washington D.C., Burlington, and Montpelier all recording record highs for the date. The contrast between the cold, dry air flowing south from Canada and the record warm, moist air ahead of the cold front created an extremely unstable atmosphere, helping fire off unusually intense thunderstorms over New England. And as we've seen so often this year, the jet stream over the thunderstorm region was unusually strong and had plenty of wind shear--a sharp change in wind speed and direction with height. This wind shear created shearing forces on the air over New England that helped get it spinning, creating rotating supercell thunderstorms capable of producing strong tornadoes.
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