What Caused Tuesday's Storm?Call it a severe thunderstorm. Call it a microburst. But even though it felt like one in places, don't call Tuesday's storm in St. Lawrence County a tornado. As 7 News weathercaster John Kubis watched the weather Tuesday afternoon, he saw the makings of a big, bad storm. First, temperatures were near records by early Tuesday afternoon - 95 in Potsdam, 92 in Canton. Second, the humidity was very high, with a dew point in the 70s. Third, a cold front was headed our way from Canada. That cold front collided with all the energy bound up in hot humid air, and - we had a storm. Kubis says it was one storm, not a line of storms, not several in succession. And the storm lasted at least 20 minutes, an unusually long time. Finally, there was a lot of wind at 10,000 to 15,000 feet - that wind is what drove the storm and did the damage. Think of the amount of energy used up by the storm this way: the temperature dropped in mere minutes from the 90s to the 70s. However, the storm had none of the signs of a tornado, and the National Weather Service hadn't even hinted at the possibility of a tornado Tuesday night. |
Sunday, May 19, 2013
, Watertown, NY
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