On Saturday, May 17th at 6:50pm a tornado touched down one mile northwest of Camden.  This tornado produced winds estimated at 75mph and caused a barn to collapse along with some minor damage to residential homes.  With winds of this magnitude, this tornado is classified as an EF 0, the weakest type of tornado.

A few hours later, a funnel cloud was reported near Sylvan Beach from a trained weather spotter.  The National Weather Service in Binghamton promptly issued a tornado warning for Oneida County at 8:40pm.  A funnel cloud is a rotating cloud that is lowering in the sky; a precursor to a tornado.  Once a funnel cloud touches the ground, it is a tornado.  The funnel cloud near Sylvan Beach did not touch the ground, therefore was not a tornado. 

Camden Tornado

The Camden tornado is an amazing event when we look back on it.  Thunderstorms developed as a cold front moved through and there was enough shear in the environment to cause low topped thunderstorms.  The radar image shows the situation at 7PM, very shortly after the tornado touched down:

This is not a classic example of tornadic development.  Typically, we look for thunderstorms to take on special characteristics when they produce tornados.  Thunderstorms evolve into what we call supercell storms when they produce tornados.  Often times, the whole storm itself will rotate.  This was not the case.  The tornado developed in the extreme southwestern quadrant of the thunderstorm complex.  The perplexing part about this is that the tornado development was away from the storm itself.  The only evidence of a tornado on radar can be seen when we look at the velocity scan:

The really tiny dot you see on the left side nearest Camden (refer to top map for Camden) is the tornado.  Pair that up with the radar and they don't overlap like they should.  We're in the process of finding an explanation as to why this happened and you'll hear more about it on our weather blog this week.

Click on the video link for more...