Remembering a Historic Western Massachusetts Tornado (credit: This Day in Weather History)

DISCUSSION: As we turn the clocks back to June 9th, 1953, an F4 tornado hit Worcester, MA causing 94 fatalities. The tornado touched down in Petersham, traveled through Worcester, and on to Southborough. Debris was carried eastward and fell in the Boston area. About 4000 houses and buildings were destroyed.  It goes without saying that based on the mid-20th century timing of such a high-impact severe weather event, such a tornadic storm was much more difficult to monitor and study real-time from a remote sensing standpoint.  This is primarily due to the fact that at that point in history there was far less advanced radar-based technology in place aside from more primitive and older-style radar systems (such as the one depicted in the image attached above which shows the radar system owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time).  To learn more about this particular severe weather event which heavily impacted parts of interior New England, feel free to watch the corresponding YouTube video attached above and/or click on the following link!

To learn more about other past historic weather events from around the world, be sure to click here!

©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz