F4 tornado | |
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![]() Destroyed houses in Windsor Locks. Image by Windsor Locks Fire Department.
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Formed | 3:00 PM EDT, 3 October, 1979 |
Max rating1 | F4 tornado |
Damage | $442 million (1997 USD) ($659 million 2017 USD) |
Casualties | 3 fatalities |
Areas affected | North-central Connecticut |
1Most severe tornado damage; see Fujita scale |
The Windsor Locks, Connecticut tornado struck the towns of Windsor, Windsor Locks, and Suffield, Connecticut and Feeding Hills, Massachusetts on October 3, 1979. The short-lived but intense tornado struck without warning and caused three deaths and 500 injuries.
The storm, rated F4 on the Fujita scale, also caused more than $400 million in property damage along an 11.3-mile (18.2 km) path, and ranks as the ninth most destructive tornado in American history.
The storm system that caused the tornado had produced severe weather, including two weak tornadoes, in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey that morning. This was an unusual setup for a significant tornado, associated with a warm front near a low-pressure center. A thunderstorm cell formed south of Long Island around 10:20 am, and became a supercell sometime later after interacting with a surface low-pressure center. It turned north as a left-moving supercell, meaning it moved left with respect to the mean atmospheric flow. Left-moving supercells are very rare, as cyclonic storms usually turn to the right of the mean flow. It is unknown whether this leftward movement was due to an atmospheric interaction or terrain-induced movement, as the storm moved straight up the Connecticut River valley.
No tornado watches or warnings were issued before the storm struck. This was later determined to be because of missing atmospheric sounding data, as well as an incorrect assessment of the height of the tropopause, which led to an underestimation of the strength of the thunderstorm which produced the tornado. Although a severe thunderstorm warning was issued at 2:57 pm, very few people received the warnings in time.