Sunday’s spin up in North Country confirmed as tornado

The weekend saw a decent spell of weather including sunshine Saturday and Sunday, but there were also some stronger storms and heavier downpours to contend with Sunday afternoon. Some of those storms turned feisty and one even dropped a brief, short-lived tornado.

This confirmed tornado was located in Pikes Corner, New York. It’s a small community just south of Gouverneur in St. Lawrence County. The tornado was believed to have been on the ground for about a minute and where it touched down was in a remote area called Matoon Creek. The Burlington National Weather Service described the location as “an area not conducive for a survey”.

The lack of a survey and overall storm damage means that this tornado will be given a rating of EF-U. It’s a rating you don’t see often but it simply means the rating is unknown because of a multitude of factors. In this instance, the difficulty of getting to the location and the time it was on the ground were big factors in determining the EF-U rating. Nevertheless, this tornado was estimated to have had max winds of about 65 mph. The path length was determined to be approximately 0.25 miles with the path width registering at 10 yards. What this tells us is that the tornado was not very big, not on the ground long, and confirms it did not do much damage.

The local photographic evidence obtained by the Burlington National Weather Service indicates that a funnel cloud was in the area around 2:18 PM. If you have any more information about this severe weather event or have additional damage to report, please contact the Burlington National Weather Service office.

Lastly, this was the 28 ^th tornado for 2024 which makes this year the most active tornado season on record in the state of New York. The second most active was 2007 when there were 25 reported tornadoes. The records for most yearly tornadoes date back to 1950 so this is quite the significant, unwanted record to have been broken this weekend.

We still have lots of summer and severe weather season to get through. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to refresh yourself about tornado safety in the event there are any future severe weather events or risks leading up to the colder seasons. Stay safe, up to date on the forecast, and weather aware.

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