Some rare weather in the Northeast

Yesterday I did my normal routine. Alarm goes off at 6:15, shower, feed cats, clean up after cats, empty dishwasher, make coffee, drink coffee, watch the news to see what the weather will be to determine what my hair will do. The forecast was calling for warm weather with passing thunderstorms..so I braved the 20 minute hair drying and straightening session in my bathroom thinking..it'll be a good hair day.

Towards the end of the workday, all anyone could talk about were these tornado warnings. The first thing that went through my mind was..a tornado..in RI? Yeah, okay..not going to happen. While driving home on 95, my cell phone rang. My sister was calling to tell me a tornado touched down in Westfield, MA at 4:30 P.M. Westfield, MA is about 2 hours from us...but of particular concern ..because that's where Mom lives! She works in Springfield and lives in Westfield and we knew her commute home was right in this area. After a number of phone calls to the house, we knew the lines must be down. Finally we got through to find out she was ok.

I got home, turned on the news and couldn't believe the footage. Maybe some mid west folks are used to this, but we rarely see anything like this in New England. Here's a video of the tornado going across the Memorial Street Bridge and the Conneticut River heading towards downtown Springfield.

Some pictures of the destruction. 4 people have been confirmed dead and over 30 injured.



Here's hoping that the necessary help goes out to those in Western, MA!