The title of this post is exactly what the
Bangor Daily News asked after a supercell snapped trees in the Maine northwoods on August 29th. The average radar beam height of the lowest tilt was over 2 km for much of this storm's lifetime, but the storm exhibited a very strong increase in rotation in the low-levels and mid-levels at around 19:54Z, a few minutes before the first tornado warning was issued. The storm also had markedly weak lightning activity from the ENTLN.
The NWS in Caribou and the Maine Forest Service did a fly over and looked for ground damage but
apparently found none. So in this case, it probably didn't happen, but at least any lumberjacks in the area were warned for this potent storm.
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| Figure 1: ProbTornado contours, MRMS MergedComposite reflectivity, and NWS severe weather warnings. |
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| Figure 2: Time series of the probability of tornado and constituent predictors for the tornado-warned storm in Figure 1. |
