Tornado, Microbursts Confirmed During July 18 Storm

As the state’s electricity companies continue to work to bring power back to about 150 Granite Staters, forecasters and weather watchers are reporting the damage – including hundreds of downed trees – as the cleanup around the state continues.

The National Weather Service has also confirmed that the storm damage in both Plaistow as well as Haverhill, Massachusetts, appeared to be caused by microbursts.

Microbursts are downdraft air currents that flow in the opposite direction as tornadoes but often cause similar damage.

Confirmed microburst in #Haverhill. So what does that mean? Here is a diagram to help visualize the process. pic.twitter.com/A3k7UXOvt4
— NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) July" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/NWSBoston/... 19, 2016

Tornado warnings were issued for the northernmost regions of Northern New England and during the height of the storm, at least one was reported in Woodland, Maine. The National Weather Service is asking for as many reports from weather watchers as it can get while it gathers more data about the storm.

Unitil has line workers in Plaistow and Exeter working on restoring customers, while Eversource still has outages in Barrington, Dover, Pittsburg and Strafford. Unitil noted on Twitter that the company had workers repairing lines in Plaistow during the overnight hours. Unitil offered an update on YouTube this morning.

In Plaistow, a house was reportedly struck by lightning but did not catch on fire, and a person was trapped in a vehicle after a tree fell. Bedford Police reported a number of roads where lights weren’t functioning and debris was in the middle of roadways.

The picture below was taken at Loring Air Force Base in Maine at around 6 p.m. on July 18.

Caption: A downed tree in Manchester. Credit: Jeffrey Hastings/Frame of Mind Photography. FrameofMindPhoto.com.