Vermont is Tornado Alley?

Yesterday, here in Vermont, we had all kinds of tornado watches and warnings, as if this were Kansas or some damn place.

Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

A tree fell on this guy's house during a
severe thunderstorm in Milton, Vt.
Tuesday. One branch got stuck on the
home's nice turret

So far, there have been no confirmed reports of Vermont tornadoes, but there was plenty of hail, wind damage, flash floods, fires caused by lightning and other mayhem, as I reported today in the Burlington Free Press.

Yes, I know stormy weather is a pain in the ass for a lot of people, but as regular readers know, I do love big storms. I got to chase a few of them yesterday.

I missed out on a Midwest-style supercell thunderstorm that went across the northern part of the state. The storm started hinting that it wanted to drop a tornado when it was a couple miles north of my St. Albans, Vermont house. It kept wanting to drop a twister as it traveled 50 miles toward the northeastern part of the state, but it didn't quite produce a tornado. Just as well.

I did get to enjoy a severe thunderstorm in the town of Milton, Vermont, as the two videos below show.

In the first one, I love the dude that comes in at around 2:18 nonchalantly walking in the swirling gusts and drowing lane. The second video is especially amateurish as you get a lovely view of my truck dashboard as I moved out of a driveway into a parking lot to allow other motorists to get off the road.

They wanted out because they couldn't see where they were driving in the torrent. Can't blame 'em