Tornado That Hits Hamden On Same Track, Time as ‘89 Tornado

HAMDEN, CT — If the big storm that blew through Connecticut Tuesday – and the path of destruction it left – rang a bell with you it’s for good reason. Tuesday’s late afternoon/early evening storm hit the town of Hamden particularly hard – knocking down trees and causing power outages for thousands. It also hit the Valley, Woodbridge, Bethany, Woodbridge, Prospect, Newtown and many other towns hard.

It came 29 years after a tornado hit on July 10, 1989 – which caused more than $130 million in damage to five states across the country. The hardest hit town in the ‘89 tornado in Greater New Haven was...Hamden.

On Wednesday, the National Weather Service confirmed that the storm that hit this past Tuesday in Hamden was - indeed - a tornado.

A large section of Hamden, including an industrial parks and hundreds of homes, were destroyed and in some places buildings were flattened to the ground by the tornado in 1989.

The ’89 tornado also hit the Valley, and yep, Woodbridge, Bethany and other towns mentioned above that were also hit hard by Tuesday’s storm.

At the peak of the ’89 storm, winds reached 90 miles per hour.

One other irony about the ’89 storm and the one that hit on Tuesday – they both hit at nearly the exact same time of day: late afternoon, early evening.

There was one difference in the two big storms: ‘89 tornado hit on a Monday.

Photo of ‘89 tornado by Ed Doiron, Jr.