Tropical Storm — Northern Carroll, New Hampshire

2020-08-04 · Northern Carroll, New Hampshire

Event narrative

Tropical Storm Isaias brought the greatest impacts to the state of New Hampshire in Carroll County. Numerous snapped and uprooted trees along with broken branches caused downed power lines throughout the county. Carroll County was the hardest hit for outages with 30% of customers losing power, the majority of power was restored within 24 hours. An enhanced region of tree damage, with estimated wind speeds of 70 mph, occurred in North Conway causing 100s of trees to fall. One large Eastern White Pine tree fell on a house, killing one person. Additional enhanced tree damage was reported in Bartlett. No flooding was reported.

Wider weather episode

Tropical Storm Isaias was the first tropical storm to impact New Hampshire since 2011. The center of the storm tracked west of the state, keeping the flooding rain associated with the storm across New York. The primary impacts the storm brought to New Hampshire were gusty winds with widespread reports of wind gusts in the mid to upper 40s. Numerous trees and branches were brought down with scattered power outages across the state. An area of enhanced damage was concentrated in Carroll County as a squall line pushed through the region. Concentrated tree damage toppled 100s of trees with one fatality being reported as a large crashed into the home. Overall storm impacts were brief with a period of gusty winds from the south to southeast on the evening of August 4th causing most of the damage. There was no coastal flooding reported as the relatively minor storm surge of around a foot coincided at the time of low tide on the New Hampshire coast.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 918460. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.