As the week began and people got back to work, residents around Ellenville were still talking about the storm that woke them this past Saturday. Unfortunately, sleep was not the only thing lost. Several people will be losing lots of money to repair damage done to their homes, cars or other property that the storm left in its wake. And while the odd pattern of destruction caused many to wonder if Ellenville had experienced a tornado, The Journal spoke with Chief of Police Phil Mattracion to find out just what had happened.

According to Mattracion, “We had what's known as a microburst.”

For those of us that are not meteorologically inclined, the term “microburst” is a very localized column of sinking air that produces damaging “straightline” (or divergent) winds - not a cyclone (convergent winds). The phenomenon can affect an area of up to 2.5 miles in diameter with winds of 75 miles per hour or more. (Tetsuya Theodore Fujita, a severe weather expert, coined the term.)

Crews from Central Hudson, Verizon and Time-Warner were on the scene to replace pole broken by the storm and restore service to village customers.

Matracion went on to say that he had met, “with the National Weather Service on Sunday, walked them around, showed them the storm damage. They came down from Albany because they saw something that was abnormal on their radar screen and they wanted to see what happened.” Based on their radar readings and the evidence of destruction in the village, the National Weather Service decided that it was, in fact, a microburst.

Of course, whether it was a tornado or a microburst did not really matter to the 500 customers* (see below) who were without power throughout most of Saturday. A spokeswoman from Central Hudson said that the company started receiving calls at about 5:30AM. She went on to say that Central Hudson had 25 different incidents that they had to respond to throughout the day. Accordingly, the energy company dispatched five crews that worked through the night to have everyone's power restored by Sunday morning.

However, one of the crew's foremen said that, “it was some of the worst conditions he had ever seen in Ellenville.”

But while a large number of people were inconvenienced by the loss of power and several others were dismayed at the damages to their property, Chief Mattracion put the day into perspective, saying “There were no injuries. That was the biggest thing.”

* An article that appeared in the Sunday, July 23 edition of The Times Herald Record placed the number of people without power at 1,000 customers. At press time, The Journal was unable to reconcile the two numbers other than to say that The Journal had direct contact with a Central Hudson representative.

COMMENTS about this article ()