EF2 Tornado — Rockingham, New Hampshire

2008-07-24 · near Leavitts Hill, Rockingham, New Hampshire

Event narrative

An E-F2 tornado touched down about 5 miles southwest of Northwood Narrows and moved north northeast for a little over 5 miles before crossing into Merrimack County. Numerous trees were downed and many homes were damaged or destroyed. A woman was killed when the house she was in collapsed.

Wider weather episode

On July 24th a closed 500 mb low was digging over NY/PA and waves of surface low pressure were riding north along the associated surface front to the west of the forecast area. A strong 50kt low level jet was also riding northward ahead of the front. This resulted in extremely high helicity values across southern and central New Hampshire. A surface dew point boundary was in place across south central New Hampshire with readings in the lower 70s to the east of this boundary and in the mid 60s to the west. Sunshine began breaking out to the east of this boundary by mid morning and convection began developing by late morning. Storms grew rapidly and quickly began rotating. A tornado rated as strong as F2 cut a 50 mile path through 5 counties in southeast New Hampshire resulting in 1 fatality and damage to over 100 structures some of which were completely destroyed.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (43.1549, -71.3073)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 123372. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.