An F1 tornado with wind speeds of 120 to 180 km/h left a trail of destruction in Leamington, Ont., early Sunday, spawned by the same storm that resulted in at least seven deaths after tornadoes lashed the U.S. Midwest.
A team from Environment Canada said the area was hit by a combination of a tornado and an equally strong wind phenomenon called a downburst.
Residents in the small community southeast of Windsor are still reeling in the aftermath of the storm.
AccuWeather meteorologist Car Erickson said the tornado touchdown was confirmed by Environment Canada after inspecting damage on the ground.
But area residents needed no such confirmation.
“I would never want to live through this again. Ever, Ever. It’s the sound. When you start hearing trees snapping . . . that is just scary,” said Marilyn Collard, who compared the storm’s piercing noise to a train whistle.
At 3 a.m. Sunday, it took a moment for her to recognize the jarring noise. “It hit me, ‘Oh my god, that is a tornado,’ ” she said. Collard ran and grabbed her husband and son, and just as they reached the top of the steps to the basement, the windows exploded, whipping around debris, dirt, and shingles from the neighbour’s roof.
By 6:30 a.m., deputy mayor Rob Schmidt had declared a state of emergency. Leamington spokesperson Anne Miskovsky said the storm hit the community of about 30,000 residents hard, downing trees and scattering debris along the shore of Lake Erie.
Power outages were widespread and crews worked feverishly to restore electricity, but by late afternoon, Miskovsky said some residents would be without power for days.
The Red Cross opened up an emergency shelter, but there were no reports of serious injuries. On the other side of the lake, people weren’t so lucky.
Tornadoes and thunderstorms from the same weather system also swept through the U.S. Midwest late Saturday, killing at least seven people in Ohio, including a child, and tearing the siding off some buildings at a nuclear plant in Michigan.
Damage stretched from Illinois toward Pennsylvania and north into Michigan, with the storm leaving dozens of flattened homes and overturned vehicles in its wake.
Carl Erickson, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com, said a difference in air temperature is what caused the States to have such a severe lashing.
“In this particular case, it was just given the warm, moist air,” he said. “Once you got north of Detroit, the air mass was a lot more stable.”
Erickson said the movement of moist, warm air can generate “wind shear,” a radical shift in wind speed and direction that occurs over a very short distance. “Wind shear is what helps some of these storms rotate and that can spawn tornadoes,” he said.
Miskovsky estimated that “millions of dollars of damage” had accrued on Leamington’s lakefront properties. City officials said recently refurbished Seacliff Park and the city’s marina were also hit hard.
Environment Canada said its team had been studying the worst of the damage along a two kilometre swath that looked like it was struck by first a tornado and then a downburst. A downburst is a powerful downward air current that, unlike a tornado, doesn’t rotate, but it can be just as deadly.
“It can do damage as significant as a tornado,” said Peter Kimbell, a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment Canada.
The brief tornado has been ranked as an F1, which has winds of between 120 to 170 kilometres per hour.
Kimbell said approximately 11 tornadoes are recorded each year in Ontario, with most touching in “the tornado alley between Windsor and Barrie.”
“If there’s going to be a tornado in Ontario, it’s most likely to happen there,” he said.
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