Western New York Woman’s Home Shaken By Violent Microburst

Tornadoes aren’t common in Western New York, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Tornadoes can happen as a result of a thunderstorm where there is warm, humid air rising in the thunderclouds – all while cool air falls with the precipitation, but they usually don’t happen around Buffalo.

However, one woman in Cheektowaga thought a tornado hit her house over the weekend.

She shared her experience on Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=header

I booked it to my basement and child down there for about 20 minutes just to be safe but I'm not seeing any reports of a tornado. Anyone else near the airport experience anything like this tonight?”

The woman also shared that her wooden fence had fallen down as a result of the strong winds.

But was it a tornado though?

It was not, but other people had the same suspicions.

One person responded with their experience:

“I was on I-190 on the way home when the storm first blew in, and the dust cloud looked like a tornado. I thought it was a storm cloud touching down for a minute, but I’m pretty positive it was dust or smoke or some type of matter picked up by the wind. Either way, it was terrifying and I felt as if being on the interstate was the worst place to be at that moment.”

Reports came in from Lancaster, Eden, Depew, Bennington, Syracuse and more, but it wasn’t a tornado. They were only high winds, which can sometimes feel like the early warning signs of a tornado.

The actual name for a storm like this is a microburst storm, which has a downdraft of air in a thunderstorm that is about 2.5 miles in scale. The reason many people associate a microburst with a tornado is that some microbursts can pose a threat to life and property.

Here is a picture of a microburst so you can get an idea of what it looks like.

While a tornado touched down in April 2022, there doesn’t seem to have been one since. Could it happen? Sure, but it is not common around Western New York.