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False Weather Report Leads to Tornado Warning

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Shortly before 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Stephen Dirienzo, a meteorologist at the Albany, New York National Weather Service, was about to issue a severe thunderstorm warning for Columbia County in New York when the office received a phone call from someone who said a tornado was on the ground in the village of Copake.

The report came from a trained weather spotter.

The tornado warning was issued for Columbia and Dutchess Counties in New York, as well as adjacent sections of Berkshire County in Massachusetts and Litchfield County in Connecticut.

The warning was subsequently reissued farther south in Connecticut as the storm crossed the border and turned right.

"From what we understand, no one can find any damage consistent with a tornado," Dirienzo said.

The "confirmed" tornado turned out to be a false report.

Based on pictures and video from Copake, what the spotter was actually looking at was a large, rotating wall cloud and a large appendage off the cloud known as a beaver tail or scud.

The latter can be mistaken for a tornado if a storm spotter doesn't know exactly what they're looking for.

"People can get freaked out, so to speak, and get excited," Dirienzo said. "They called us right away, which is a good thing to do, but probably got overzealous as far as what was actually happening."

The storm was quite powerful, however, dropping hail to the size of tennis balls in New York and the size of golf balls in Connecticut.

In Salisbury the hail accumulated to several inches in some towns.

While the storm spotter in this case was likely mistaken, some of the reports that come into the National Weather Service are hoaxes.

Bogus pictures and observations are an unfortunate reality for the government agency charged with issuing warnings to protect life and property.

"We've had a number of different hoaxes. Everything from dam failures to tornadoes that were photoshopped in from the Great Plains," Dirienzo said.

Most storm reports from the public, law enforcement, and trained spotters are very useful.

While only a small number of reports are either hoaxes or misunderstandings, like the one in Copake on Tuesday, they can lead to false alarm warnings.


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