Officials Wonder if Microburst Hit Glastonbury

After reports that about a dozen trees were uprooted within a quarter mile of each other, Glastonbury’s emergency management director suspects that a microburst may have touched down on Hopewell Road during Tropical Storm Irene.

The trees, reaching between 50 feet to about 200 feet high, and more than 50 years old, all fell in the upper Hopewell Road section of town. That they all fell in the same westerly direction, were all uprooted and were located in the same small radius, leads Robert DiBella, director of Emergency Management/Civil Preparedness, to think a microburst came through the area Monday.

“It looks like a microburst, which is effectively a small-size tornado,” DiBella said.

According to Wikipedia, a microburst is a localized column of sinking air that can produce straight-line winds similar to a tornado. A microburst often has high winds that can knock over fully grown trees., according to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It can last for a couple of seconds to several minutes.

Vince Summit lives on Hopewell Road adjacent to property where one tree was uprooted and across the street from property where a stand of at least five trees were uprooted, with rootballs bigger than a large exercise ball exposed.

He said he suspected a microburst but also wondered if an underground water source that runs close to the surface had weakened the trees’ root system and enabled a strong wind to upend them.

Lisa McCormick, who lives about a quarter of a mile away from Summit, noticed that a few 60-foot-tall ash trees fell, taking down a fence she had just installed, after her dogs began barking at 6 a.m. By 11 a.m., three or four more trees had fallen, one of them bringing down a gutter on the backside of her home. All fell in the same direction. All were uprooted.

“I heard a whoosh,” and saw a tree going down, she said. McCormick said she was fortunate that the trees, which were tall and about 24 inches in diameter, did not fall on her house, just on two sides of it. She had yet to get a damage assessment from her insurance company.

McCormick did not know the age of the trees. Her house was built in the 1800s, she said.

DiBella said he would invite weather experts out to the three sites to determine whether the trees were felled by a microburst.