CONWAY, Mass (Reuters) – cheap handbagsAt least four people were killed when storms and tornadoes tore through heavily populated western and central Massachusetts on Wednesday, causing widespread damage across some 19 communities, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said.
coach Handbags Patrick told a press conference that two people were killed in Westfield, one in Brimfield, and one in West Springfield.
Patrick declared a state of emergency after at least two tornadoes touched down, accompanied by high winds, heavy rain, hail and severe thunderstorms.
About 40 people were injured in Springfield and around 250 others who were displaced by the storm stayed at a shelter, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno said.
Search and rescue teams were out and doing door-to-door searches to check on residents. Authorities will be surveying the damage from aircraft starting on Thursday morning.
The first tornado touched down at about 4:30 p.m. local time in Springfield, the third largest city in the state, Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, said.
“There was a tornado on the ground and reports of widespread damage in Hampden, Massachusetts, and also reports of damage in Springfield,” Vaccaro said.
Much of the damage was in Springfield’s South End neighborhood near Interstate 91 and the Connecticut River. Heavy winds could be seen churning the Connecticut River and hail, heavy rain and thunder hammered the area.
A second tornado hit in north Springfield at about 6:20 p.m. local time, authorities said.
“We have 19 communities in western and central Massachusetts that have reported some form of tornado or touch-down,” said Scott MacLeod, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.
Patrick authorized 1,000 National Guard troops to be called up to provide support in the affected areas.
The severe weather was the result of colder air clashing with warm, humid weather that has produced some record temperatures for early June through much of the Mid-Atlantic, meteorologists said.
Tornadoes are rare, although not unheard of, in New England.
They are also uncommon in California, but on Wednesday several witnesses spotted a tornado touch down 5 miles from Yuba City in northern California, about an hour’s drive north of Sacramento, National Weather Service officials said.
The tornado came down in a rural area and does not appear to have caused damage, NWS forecaster George Cline said.
The U.S. has been battered by tornadoes this year and more than 500 people have been killed, most of them in the Southeast, especially Alabama, and in Joplin, Missouri. The Joplin tornado killed 134 people, making it the deadliest single twister since 1947.
(Additional reporting by Lauren Keiper and Ros Krasny in Boston and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Cheap coach handbagsEditing by Barbara Goldberg, Greg McCune and Ellen Wulfhorst)