After touring damage in central New York left behind by yesterday's strong tornado that killed four people, Governor Andrew Cuomo said "We don't get tornadoes in New York, right? Anyone will tell you that. Well, we do now." Except he's wrong. Really wrong. Really, really wrong.Yesterday's tornado struck Smithfield, New York with winds of "at least 100 MPH" according to the National Weather Service meteorologists surveying the damage. Four people were killed in three different houses when the tornado swept through the community.The tornado was one of the hundreds that have hit New York in the past sixty years, and it's not even the first one to strike this year. Just last month a half-mile wide EF-3 tornado struck Duanesburg, New York.
New York is certainly not tornado alley, but the northeastern state sees its fair share of severe weather each year. The Empire State has seen 409 tornadoes since we began keeping records in 1950, for an annual average of 6 to 7 tornadoes each year. Most tornado activity in New York occurs during the summer and fall months, which holds true for both the state's strongest and deadliest tornadoes.
The strongest tornado to hit New York was an F4 that struck near Albany on July 10, 1989, and the deadliest was an F1 that struck a school cafeteria in Orange County, killing 9 students inside.
Whether Cuomo himself is woefully unaware of his own state's climatology or he was fed bad information by his staffers, his statement was certainly not true. New York gets tornadoes, and it gets them every year. Anyone will tell you that.
Just to make sure the governor understands that New York does indeed get tornadoes, another one hit yesterday:
SCOTIA — Paul Shave went for a ride Tuesday when a strong gust of wind turned his pole barn into a helicopter with no propeller.
Fortunately for Shave, co-owner of Empire Self Storage on Vley Road, after grabbing onto a wooden support pole, he let go before it was too late. A good chunk of the pole barn, an old wood-framed building with a metal roof and siding that stored boats and cars, was pulled out of the ground by the wind and dropped about 100 feet away, on top of a tractor-trailer.
“I let go, and I went down,” said Shave, who jumped from “two to three feet” up and landed on a slab of concrete about 10 feet over. “It was taking me with it.” The National Weather Service later determined the area was hit by a tornado. In a tweet posted Tuesday evening, the service’s Albany office said the storm was classified as an EF0, the lowest level on the Enhanced Fujita scale.
According to the service’s website, an EF0 tornado carries maximum sustained winds of 72 mph and gusts of 78 mph.
How does a guy who knows so little about so much get to be in charge of things?
How does someone like this get to be in charge of things?
ReplyDeleteWell, give your campaign contributors whatever they want, while doing in the nastiest, most vicious way possible, and it's amazing how far you can go.
Cuomo was built on a house of cards, or more appropriately, a house of dollar bills and many of them.
ReplyDeleteBut he is going to realize that tornados do pass through New York...especially the one in the form of the state attorney general who I'm sure, by now, has enough evidence to blow the Cuomo house over...it is a house that is propped up by money, but lacks ethics, morals, and standards which Mr Cuomo has demonstrated time and again, that he seriously lacks.
The billionaires know that Cuomo is seriously damaged...that's why Hochul was brought in...a revolving door to keep their policies that harm the American people functioning.
Wrong again, Andrew.
ReplyDeleteAs residents of Brooklyn and Queens could tell you, NYC had tornadoes in the summers of 2007, 2010 and 2012. Yes, they had low F ratings, but the 2007 one was strong enough to rip the roofs off of buildings in southern Brooklyn.