Tornadoes aren’t common in Western New York, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. 

Tornadoes can happen as a result of a thunderstorm where there is warm, humid air rising in the thunderclouds – all while cool air falls with the precipitation, but they usually don’t happen around Buffalo. 

However, one woman in Cheektowaga thought a tornado hit her house over the weekend. 

She shared her experience on Reddit. 

“I know we just got a nasty storm there for a bit but every door on the outside of my house started shaking like a horde of zombies were trying to violently get in. Never in my life had anything like that happen no matter how high the winds got. It sent shivers down my spine, it was so creepy.

 

Tornado in Cheektowaga?
by u/Do_You_Compute in Buffalo

I booked it to my basement and child down there for about 20 minutes just to be safe but I'm not seeing any reports of a tornado. Anyone else near the airport experience anything like this tonight?”

The woman also shared that her wooden fence had fallen down as a result of the strong winds.

But was it a tornado though?

It was not, but other people had the same suspicions. 

One person responded with their experience:

“I was on I-190 on the way home when the storm first blew in, and the dust cloud looked like a tornado. I thought it was a storm cloud touching down for a minute, but I’m pretty positive it was dust or smoke or some type of matter picked up by the wind. Either way, it was terrifying and I felt as if being on the interstate was the worst place to be at that moment.”

Reports came in from Lancaster, Eden, Depew, Bennington, Syracuse and more, but it wasn’t a tornado. They were only high winds, which can sometimes feel like the early warning signs of a tornado. 

The actual name for a storm like this is a microburst storm, which has a downdraft of air in a thunderstorm that is about 2.5 miles in scale. The reason many people associate a microburst with a tornado is that some microbursts can pose a threat to life and property.  

Here is a picture of a microburst so you can get an idea of what it looks like. 

While a tornado touched down in April 2022, there doesn’t seem to have been one since. Could it happen? Sure, but it is not common around Western New York. 

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