Incredible Springfield Tornado Video, Radar, Stats

I'm sure by now you've seen the video of the Springfield, Massachusetts tornado sucking up the water from the Connecticut River:

This video is truly incredible. Can you imagine what the odds are of a tornado, just transparent enough to see clearly, coming this close to a roof camera, over a river, at rush hour? Astronomical. This will probably be the best tornado video we will see for another 10 years at least. As Henry pointed out, the video gives an incredible look at the circulation around a twister, and we're lucky it was weak enough to be transparent at this point, or there would have been mass casualties as vehicles were pulled over the bridge into the river (so far "only" four people have perished). Here's the radar shot (from Henry) showing a huge hook echo and debris ball:

There were 11 Tornado Warnings and 19 Severe Thunderstorm Warnings issued by the Boston NWS office alone yesterday, for the county (Hampden) where Springfield is.

A couple interesting facts that the media is not covering well:

1. It is generally the typical time of year to get a tornado in this area, according to the NWS, but we're not in either of the peaks of severe weather season there.

2. These tornadoes did come at the normal time of day for severe weather in this area - around 20:30 Z (4:30 PM).

3. Tornadoes in Mass. are not rare - there have been over 150 from 1950-2008 - but only 10 major (EF-3+) tornadoes during that period. There only have been 12 this century (up to 2008).