Severe Storm In Upton Leaves Power Outages, Property Damage And Uprooted Trees

An isolated storm rocked Upton in Massachusetts all through the early hours of Thursday morning, damaging homes, bringing down trees and cutting power for about 19 percent of the community, Boston Globe reported.

No injuries were reported along the Main Street, also known as Route 140. A residential property along the street was heavily damaged. The roof was ripped off due to the storm, and 10 people were forced to evacuate, tweeted the Uptown Fire Department.

They added the Red Cross will assist the people who were evacuated. The evacuated area, which had been blocked earlier as crews worked to clear the region, was reopened for traffic. The Uptown Fire Department also tweeted the storm damage was isolated to section of Main St, Warren St and Ephraims Way.

Kyle Griffin was a resident of the house that was damaged. He told CBS Boston he was inside his home when the storm began.

“I looked out and heard glass shatter because we had a little skylight on the porch. Then I couldn’t find my roof,” Griffin said.

The porch roof of the house was ripped off and blown into another part of the home. The house was determined to be unsafe, following which he was asked to evacuate.

Another tweet by the Upton Emergency Management said the National Weather Service was sending two meteorologists to survey the damage caused by the storm, adding Warren Street was still closed to traffic.

An earlier tweet by the Upton Emergency Management urged people to be cautious while venturing outside due to busted power lines. “Always assume power lines are live,” said another tweet.

“We ran outside to see what was going on and we noticed half of the roof was missing,” a resident Eric Grubb told 7 News Boston. “We went around to see if everyone else was okay which they thankfully were, and then it was just a matter of seeing what was going on. There was debris everywhere which was pretty crazy.”

“The winds were just howling in circles and I thought it was hail, but it wasn’t hail, it was obviously all the trees falling down,” he said. “I saw a transformer blow up out in the woods and I look outside and my truck was destroyed so it hasn’t been a good day.”

A flash flood watch is also in effect through 8 a.m. EDT in all areas except for the Cape and the Islands, WCVB reported. Showers and downpours will be on and off throughout the day as storms that had recently flooded the mid-Atlantic make their way to New England.

“There will be bands of heavy downpours, maybe even a rumble of thunder in eastern Massachusetts as well,” StormTeam 5 Chief Meteorologist Harvey Leonard said, adding the heavy rains should stop by the end of the morning commute, but the storm threats still remained.

“It depends if we get sunshine, then we can build a couple of thunderstorms,” Leonard said. “If we move into the 80s tomorrow, expect another possible round of downpours or storms during the mid-late afternoon.”