June 10 1989: The Most Frightening Stormy Afternoon of My Life

Written by Louis Gentile and published on Associated Content via his explicit permission. Portions of this article were published by Lou Gentile on Web TV and in discussion groups.

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I've been very interested in the weather since I was a teenager. For years, I was a volunteer observer for a weather station at a local airport. This article describes one of the most thrilling and frightening afternoons I've experienced.

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At work, at 5:40 p.m. on July 10, 1989, at Sikorsky in Stratford, CT, I overheard two of the other employees saying that they never saw anything like this in their lives.

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It was 5:45 p.m. I remember how, earlier, just before Noon, and before I came to work, I heard on 1010 WINS Radio about a cluster of severe electrical storms with the potential for large hail and locally damaging surface winds across upstate New York and moving to the southeast. Increasing clouds were moving across Connecticut with gusty southwest winds to 30 miles an hour during the afternoon with temperatures here in the upper 70s to the lower 80s. So (at 5:45 PM) I took a walk outside the plant where there were other employees already watching this storm that was now to the north and moving to the SSE toward us. I was thrilled. Hundreds of short bolts of lightning, like static electricity, like fireworks all over the black northern sky, a beautiful sight, and getting closer. It was like I was all smiles. I love this stuff.

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I remember how three hours ago at 3:00 p.m., I learned from WCBS Radio that the thunderstorms were already roaring south-southeastward across Albany New York at 45-50 miles an hour and a thick alto stratus cloud layer had spread over western CT at 10,000 feet above the surface and how lightning static on the A.M. band became continuous, drowning out radio stations and indicating possible tornado activity in the thunderstorm cluster 100 miles to the Northwest at that point rapidly advancing toward our state.

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But now, at 6:00 p.m. the blackness was advancing in on us from the north, the thunder was getting louder, and the rain was moving in. It was still daytime, two hours before sunset, but quickly becoming many times darker than Midnight, and with visibility quickly dropping down to six inches as the rain hit, it was like the smile on my face turned upside down and I was almost shaking with fear. We were now watching it through the window from just inside the door. It was so dark we could not even see the maintenance garage 20 feet away across the drive, and neither could we see anything even just outside the door except a frightening blackness I had never before seen, and many of the lightning strikes became invisible, except for the bolts hitting in and around our parking lot, and there were many of those.

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My fear was that I could not see if there was a tornado in the strange darkness and the rain and wind. Unknown to me at the time, was that at 5:00 p.m., an hour earlier, twin tornadoes entered Northwestern Connecticut (reported on NOAA) as the cluster of extremely severe electrical storms began to impact the state. Trees came down and a girl scout camp was hit according to later news reports.

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The electrical storm cluster continued to roar south-southeastward across Waterbury at 5:30 p.m. with damaging winds at 60 miles an hour according to a trusted friend of my trusted friend Bill, also driving a tree into my boss's home.

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It was now 6:10 p.m. and this was now the most frightening storm I have ever seen in my life. We were going totally blind in the thickest blackness I had ever witnessed, and with the fear of the unknown growing, that is, the fear of the unknown tornado. Unknown to me at the time was that a strong tornado had just descended on the city of Hamden, only 18 miles to our northeast, and Channel 8 television was being blown off the air during its weather report as New Haven was hit by hail and damaging winds, this, later from a friend of mine and later news reports from Channel 8 TV.

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Now, suddenly at 6:20 p.m., we were able to see. Still heavy rain and thunder, but visibility above a mile was a welcome sight. What was not a welcome sight was that river of water, about two feet high, with waves on top, rushing down the drive, regardless of cars and trucks in its path, and not from any stream either. We must have received four inches of rain in twenty minutes, but I was relieved, like the smile was back on my face, because it could have been worse.

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I later learned that at this point, the dark thunderstorm cluster with max tops at 62,000 feet above the surface or with tops more than ten miles high now extended from southern New Haven County to southeastern Fairfield County in southern Connecticut, advancing now on the coast and crossing Long Island Sound, heading for Long Island during the next hour (Reported on NOAA.) (Other source: Bridgeport Airport Weather Center)

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This was one of the worst weather days in Connecticut history for parts of Litchfield, New Haven and southeastern Fairfield Counties, and fortunately, casualties were extremely low. The lesson learned was that tornadoes can strike anywhere in the lower 48 states, including counties adjacent to the Connecticut Coast.