GREENFIELD — “It was all very surreal,” Chris Belskis said following one of Monday’s severe storms. “This was very in your face.”
Belskis was driving along Plain Road around 5:15 p.m. Monday, after what he described as a “lull” in the storm. He thought the worst had passed and said the sun even began to poke out from behind the clouds.
But moments later, he said a second storm came in.
“It came in pretty hard. The rain just started coming sideways, like white-out sheet rain,” Belskis said.
And with that rain, Belskis said a tree came crashing down, with a utility pole right after.
His vehicle got struck by a portion of the tree and Belskis swerved to the left to avoid the pole behind it, ending up in a field across from where the tree and pole came down.
Belskis wasn’t injured but said the weather event was the most intense one he experienced since a microburst hit Greenfield in May 2010.
Belskis’ incident was one of many due to the storms that hit the Franklin County and other portions of Pioneer Valley Monday. The storm created messes for first responders and utility workers, as downed power lines and trees were reported in Franklin and Hampshire County, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Alan Dunham. Shelburne state police dispatch received numerous calls in Franklin County for lines down.
The storms were accompanied by tornado warnings across the state, including areas of Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire counties.
The storms caused power outages across Franklin County throughout the evening, according to Eversource’s outage map. Leyden was the most affected by 10 p.m. Monday, with 61 percent of its 362 customers estimated without power.
Ashfield, Colrain and Conway each had over 12 percent of their customers without power. Greenfield had 613 customers, or 7 percent, without power at 6:20 p.m., according to the outage map, but by 10 p.m. just 258 customers, or 3 percent, were estimated to be without power.
Lower amounts of outages were reported across the rest of Franklin County.
Dunham said the storm damage came from “straight line wind damage,” and although there was an unconfirmed report of a funnel cloud over Granby, “we have no reports of any tornado touchdowns.”
Reach Dan Desrochers at:
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