(in progess...)
Massachusetts isn't really the sort of place you expect to have strong tornadoes, but around 7pm on Memorial Day of 1995 an F3-F4 tornado tore through Great Barrington, MA. The Fairgrounds was completely flattened. Three people were killed. I grew up in a town , flattening the Fairgrounds, killing 3 people, and injuring 27.
This is interesting to me because I grew up nearby, and my mother mom worked in Great Barrington. I experienced the Tornado Warning on TV and the radio and the eerie silence before and during the storm, and spent the next few years of my life freaking out whenever I thought I saw a hook echo on the local radar. Why is this interesting in general?
This tornado spurned research into the relationship between tornadogenesis and local topography, which seems to indicate that conditions are pretty good for tornadoes in a local "Hot Spot" extending from the mid-Hudson valley to Berkshire County, Massachusetts and Litchfield County, Connecticut. (Local Tornado Hot Spot)
...