NH Weather: Record Snowfall! Tornado! Floods!

I’ve lived in NH for most of my life and do not recall any ‘historic’ weather events…..that is until just a few years ago.  It started with some parts of the state getting floods in 2005.  This past winter we had the second highest snowfall on record (we missed the all-time snowfall by about 3 inches.  Realize that the snowiest was back in the 1800’s so it puts the ’second place’ into perspective.  About 4 weeks ago the state of NH had a decent sized tornado. It hit 11 towns, had a 50 mile track, and it had a strength of an EF1 and EF2.  Realize we simply don’t ‘get’ tornadoes here.  Stats show that we do average something like one per year but I believe when they do hit it’s a very minimal one with a very minimal touchdown…..so they are pretty much not expected.  A few weeks before this tornado I was camping with my wife and children and while at the campsite someone came by to tell us we were under a tornado watch.  We simply got under our tarp and rode it out…..knowing that historically we had nothing to worry about.  Realize that was weeks before the real tornado hit.  The most recent weather event (check it out here) was last week (August 7th) when we had flash-flooding as a result of severe thunderstorms move through our area.  The worst of the storm hit the towns of Ashland, New Hampton, Meredith, and Laconia.  I had never witnessed or understood what a flash flood was….but reports stated that we got somewhere around 5 inches of rain in about 1/2 hour.  We now have roads that look like earthquakes hit…..major sections of roads washed out…..and unfortunately a little girl lost her life when her family’s vehicle got swept down into what had been a ‘brook’.  Here are a few pictures of the most recent event (the flash flooding).  Some taken by my wife and some by a friend:

Everyone looks at this and says ‘global warming‘ is causing the odd weather.  Well….I’m not sure and don’t believe in simply jumping on a bandwagon of common thought.  I do believe something has changed.  What next?  I guess we’re due for an earthquake….

This entry was posted on August 11, 2008 at 1:53 pm and is filed under New Hampshire, Health & Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.