Tornadoes' Worst Effects Hit West of Hopkinton

Firefighters and police in Hopkinton remained vigilant but at their regular posts as dusk fell in Hopkinton Wednesday.

The accompanying graphic shows a map of power outages that starts at Rte. 495 and sweeps northwest across Massachusetts and New York.

The Hopkinton High School senior class was supposed to be on a Boston Harbor cruise but were either in the Hopkinton High gym or docked in Boston, according to one parent reporting in at 9:15 p.m.

Hopkinton resident and Patch photographer Vicki Francis also said her mother used to live in North Carolina, and having lived through a tornado once, ventured to a friend’s house 10 minutes before the storm hit her Franklin, MA, home.

Hopkinton resident Amy Ritterbusch, who helps maintain the Hopkinton Parent Teacher Association website and The Runner HPTA blog, said she kept having to turn off her computer during the lightning storm.

"I'm stuck doing what I can from my Blackberry and iPod Touch," she said in an email message.

"I spent part of the early evening in the basement with the kids, which was not very pleasant since we have an old house with a yucky basement with a partial dirt floor," Ritterbusch wrote.

"The kids insisted on bringing our pet gerbils down to the basement with us." 

Storms that buffeted Hopkinton Tuesday shortly after dark may be the outer edges of what the National Weather Service calls supercell thunderstorms.

Supercells are highly organized storms characterized by updrafts that can attain speeds over 100 mph. They can produce extremely large hail and strong or violent tornadoes.

Supercells are responsible for nearly all of the significant tornadoes produced in the U.S., the weather service said.

Besides their high winds, supercells are also known to produce flash flooding.

Supercells are the types of storms that passed west of town and well into New York.

The Boston Globe said four people died and 33 were injured by tornadoes in the western part of the state.

Reporter Martin Finucane reported two killed in Westfield, one in West Springfield, and one in Brimfield.

Gov. Deval Patrick said damage was reported in 19 communities, mostly to the west of Hopkinton. Patrick declared a state of emergency and mobilized the National Guard for search and rescue, and debris cleanup.

Patrick held news conferences at the State House and at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency bunker in Framingham. 

Storm coverage pre-empted regular television broadcasts including early portions of the Bruins Stanley Cup finals in Vancouver.

HopNews said a Woodville transformer fire caused some power outages downtown.