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Boston Globe
29-05-2025
- Climate
- Boston Globe
30 years ago today, a destructive tornado tore through a small Massachusetts town
Advertisement There wasn't much left of the Great Barrington Fairgrounds after a tornado struck the night of May 29, 1995. RYAN, DAVID STAFF PHOTO The sheer force of the Great Barrington tornado toppled tall trees like matchsticks on May 29, 1995. RYAN, DAVID STAFF PHOTO It was the strongest tornado that the state of Massachusetts had seen since the June 9, 1953, twister that struck Worcester. During that evening of May 29, 1995, which was the observed Memorial Day that year, a cluster of severe thunderstorms had pushed into Berkshire County and triggered a tornado warning from the National Weather Service office out of Albany, N.Y. At first, the supercell that spawned the Greater Barrington tornado actually had produced a prior tornado in Eastern New York, an F2 that traversed 15 miles. As the storms pushed over the Massachusetts state line, huge amounts of moisture and wind shear from neighboring storms helped the supercell restrengthen, spawning the larger, deadly tornado. Advertisement Numerous vehicles and buildings were impaled by flying debris from trees, fences, and other timber. Multiple buildings lost their roofs or flat-out collapsed, including the local fairground, a supermarket, and a gas station. Bud Rodgers takes a breather after helping to clear trees from the yard of his neighbor, who, along with his family, escaped injury when their roof collapsed during the Great Barrington tornado of 1995. CHIN, BARRY GLOBE STAFF PHOTO Radar imagery on the evening of May 29, 1995, shows a supercell (deep red) pushing through Great Barrington. NWS The tornado was designated as F4 strength under the original Fujita scale, which had a strict and only wind threshold to measure tornado strength. An Enhanced Fujita Scale was implemented in 2007, taking into account damages to building structures and wind and there's a good chance that the Great Barrington twister would have been deemed an EF5 tornado by today's standards. The Enhanced Fujita Scale takes into account wind speed as well as building damage. The wind speed threshold is also lower than the original Fujita scale. NOAA Tornadoes form within supercell thunderstorms with wind shear, a change in direction and speed of wind as you move higher into the atmosphere. Ample moisture will make the air light enough and be lifted vertically, which can create a rotating column of air or tornado. Changes in directional wind shear as air rises vertically into the atmosphere will initiate rotation. Boston Globe Strong updrafts will tilt the tube of rotating air upright, forming into a tornado. Boston Globe Ken Mahan can be reached at
The Guardian
12-03-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
How Covid left a legacy of distrust and conspiracies
The very title of Laura Spinney's piece is a sad reflection of how pandemic control preferences quickly aligned along traditional political lines, to everybody's detriment (Five years on from the pandemic, the right's fake Covid narrative has been turbocharged into the mainstream, 9 March). If the right has been guilty of undermining science and scientists, I also observed through the pandemic how the left displayed a disturbing enthusiasm to restrict liberty, using fear and guilt to encourage compliance with control measures, and many arguing to prolong the restrictions beyond the point where they were doing any good. I have experience of how the Covid control measures in the NHS, while well-intentioned, were only dismantled at a snail's pace after the greatest danger had passed, prolonging the disruptive effect of the pandemic on the nation's health. School closures and enforced isolation have contributed hugely to the mental health problems and social isolation faced by all, but especially the young. While the vaccines were an impressive achievement and saved many lives, in the NHS we witnessed a foolish and time-consuming attempt to coerce all staff into being vaccinated. This was abandoned at the 11th hour, but some staff had already left rather than have a vaccine they distrusted. The general overreach of the state in the pandemic has sadly led many to be less trustful of official health guidance, especially regarding vaccines. Rather than put the blame on political opponents, with accusations of fake narratives, all of society needs to undergo some honest self-reflection and try to understand the views of those who disagree with Aodhan BreathnachConsultant medical microbiologist (and former infection control doctor), St George's Hospital, London I agree with Laura Spinney that we need to do something about the negative narrative that has developed on the pandemic. Any rational person who reads the empirical evidence would surely agree that containment in the first instance, and the magic bullet of vaccination, saved us from many more deaths in the UK, even if as Spinney says, mistakes were made. I'm not sure how we go about silencing conspiracy theories on the pandemic and on vaccines in particular. Who reads the empirical evidence apart from scientists, epidemiologists and Guardian readers like myself and interprets it favourably? I wonder how we can overcome irrationality and conspiracy in society – the Great Barrington declaration that was signed by academics being a case in point – when it has scaled even the walls of the ivory HewittMarlborough, Wiltshire The populist vaccine deniers – who post on Facebook, for example – have had to go much further recently. They claim microbes don't exist and there are no such things as viruses and bacteria. The entire medical world is therefore a scam, a vast global conspiracy for profit. Vaccines are the lethal tool created to cull populations as part of the secret new world order's objective to subjugate humanity. To swallow this nonsense in the face of the evidence is not normal. Far-right politicians codify these delusions into pseudoscience that boils down to one thing – smash the state. We had better do something about the poison pouring out from social media – and Bunning Tiverton, Devon Do you have a photograph you'd like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers' best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
