Thursday’s storm turned parts of the Delaware Valley white, and it was not snow.
Hail piled about 19 inches deep in Parkside Borough, Delaware County, trapping vehicles and closing Edgmont Avenue. PennDOT crews had to bring in front loaders because the ice was too much to shovel. Mounds of hail were still sitting along the roadside Friday morning. Nobody was hurt.
That 19 inches is accumulated hail, the depth of the ice on the ground, not the size of a single stone. The National Weather Service recorded individual hailstones up to 1.75 inches across, about golf-ball size, in Burlington County, New Jersey.
The same storm line spun up tornadoes in two states. The weather service confirmed a tornado touched down near Christiana Hospital in New Castle County, Delaware, around 1:15 PM Thursday, based on radar and video. It confirmed a second tornado near Chesterfield Township in Burlington County, New Jersey, where a barn and garage collapsed. Ratings for both were still pending Saturday.
The storm also flooded the highways. Lanes closed on I-95, I-476, and the Schuylkill Expressway, and crews carried out water rescues in Chester Township and Aston. At Philadelphia International Airport, American Airlines held about two dozen jets for hail inspections.
A tornado watch had covered eight southeastern Pennsylvania counties on Thursday, including Philadelphia. The Storm Prediction Center logged 39 severe reports from the storm line.
November storms like this are rare, and this one arrived in the middle of a nor’easter that had already been battering the region. The cleanup in Parkside took front loaders. The tornado surveys will take longer.
