Buffalo, NY — Friday is the one-year anniversary of the tornado that struck Hamburg, Holland, Rushford and Angelica, New York.
July 20, 2017 was expected to be an active day of thunderstorms. The Storms Prediction Center had Western New York under a “Slight Risk” for severe weather in their forecast from the day before. As the day unfolded, a warm front was draped across Western New York which caused a focus for thunderstorms but also a change of wind with height or wind shear.
Thunderstorms began to develop over Ontario and moved towards Niagara Falls and Buffalo producing heavy rain. In the north there was abundant cloud cover so the atmosphere was not very energized, however to the south, the sun was out over the Southern Tier and it was warming up and energizing the atmosphere. As this complex of storms moved out of Buffalo and towards the South, it began to tap into some of that energy and it developed rapidly. The storm began to rotate and the first tornado dropped near Camp Road in Hamburg and moved towards the Erie County Fairgrounds. Some minor damage was done there, but there was more widespread tree damage along Clark Road just to the East. The tornado, now an EF 2 with winds up to 135 miles an hour, did some damage to some homes near highway 219.
The tornado lifted for a short period once it crossed the 219 and then dropped again as an EF 1 near Holland with winds approaching 100 mph. The tornado lifted again and then dropped near Rushford as in EF 0 tornado with winds up to 85 mph. Once again the tornado lifted and then dropped again near Angelica as in EF 1 once again.
This tornado came from a solitary thunderstorm and was not a part of a widespread severe weather event. In fact, there were no Tornado or Severe Thunderstorm Watches watches issued at that time. Luckily, despite the strength of this tornado, there were no injuries.