Northern Tornadoes Project investigating East London for possible Tornado
Cleanup is still underway from Saturday’s massive storm that hit Southwestern Ontario, and not everyone in the region has their power restored.
While both London Hydro crews and the City of London, Ont. Forestry department work to clear streets and store power, the Western University Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) is investigating data from the Derecho which blew through the area.
“A Derecho is a widespread, long-lived, fast-moving windstorm, and this one actually snuck up on us a bit,” says Dave Sills, the executive director of the NTP.
“I was all over the computer models the day before because we were thinking there might be a possibility of a tornado in Eastern Ontario into Quebec. There was nothing about the Derecho coming. It basically started in Chicago, blew through Windsor, blew through London, and all the way to Quebec City.”
The NTP sent teams to Uxbridge and Ottawa because the damage was so intense there compared to the rest of the province. They were expecting probable tornadoes embedded in the leading edge of the Derecho in those cases.
A massive tree took out a fence and ripped up a backyard deck at a home on Mark St. in the east end of London, Ont. near Huron St. residents asses the damage on Sunday, May 22, 2022. (Brent Lale/CTV News London)
Sills knew there was some damage, so he went out Sunday to investigate.
“What I found was mostly consistent with just the straight-line winds with trees down, and some building damage,” says Sills.
“The one area that has a possibility of being a tornado is along Huron and east of Highbury, but I still have to look at the data. It was basically, as a long narrow path of enhanced damage.”
Sills has just started mapping the data he’s collected and isn’t sure exactly how wide or long the path of destruction was in that area.
“It seems like it's about five kilometres long, less than a kilometre wide, but I think it's even narrower than that,” he says.
“You're starting to get into an embedded tornado kind of category. I also am looking at radar right now to see if there was any rotation associated with the storm as it came through. So we kind of put together all these different clues, especially with these more complicated events to see if everything fits together.”
While making his rounds after the storm, Sills discovered a lot of the trees in the forested areas of the city and the older parts of the city are not the healthiest. In the Old East Village area, he says a number of trees were rotted and just came apart. However, in the Huron St. area, most of them looked like healthy trees that were just snapped.
London Hydro crews work to restore power on Huron St. just east of Highbury Ave in London, Ont. on Sunday May 22, 2022. (Brent Lale/CTV News London)
He is hoping to analyze his data soon, but he’s been very busy with interview requests from the Ottawa-area, and even international media.
“The New York Times wanted an interview today, so this is making news internationally, especially with the number of fatalities,” says Sills.
While the cleanup from the great storm continues, Sills doesn’t expect to see another one of these events in the near future.
“Thankfully they are fairly rare in Canada,” says Sills.
“In the US they get them every couple of years, but in Canada, it’s more like every five or 10 years. The last really memorable one for us is back in the 1990s so it's been a while since people have heard the term Derecho and it's and I guess that's a good thing.”
As of noon Monday, London Hydro was reporting 24 outages remaining across the City of London.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Former homicide detective explains how police will investigate shooting outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
Federal government grants B.C.'s request to recriminalize hard drugs in public spaces
The federal government is granting British Columbia's request to recriminalize hard drugs in public spaces, nearly two weeks after the province asked to end its pilot project early over concerns of public drug use.
Stormy Daniels describes meeting Trump during occasionally graphic testimony in hush money trial
Stormy Daniels took the witness stand Tuesday at Donald Trump's hush money trial, describing for jurors a sexual encounter the porn actor says she had with him in 2006 that resulted in her being paid off to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
MPs agree Canadian gov't should improve new disability benefit
The federal government needs to safeguard the incoming Canada Disability Benefit from clawbacks and do more to ensure it actually meets the stated aim of lifting people living with disabilities out of poverty, MPs from all parties agree.
King Charles too busy to see son Prince Harry during U.K. trip
Prince Harry will not be seeing his father King Charles during his current visit to Britain as the monarch will be too busy, Harry's spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Boy Scouts of America changing name for first time in 114 years, aiming for inclusivity
The Boy Scouts of America is changing its name for the first time in its 114-year history and will become Scouting America. It's a significant shift as the organization emerges from bankruptcy following a flood of sexual abuse claims and seeks to focus on inclusion.
opinion Tom Mulcair: Trudeau's handling of Poilievre's 'wacko' House turfing a clear sign of Liberal desperation
When Speaker Greg Fergus tossed out Pierre Poilievre from the House last week, "those of us who have experience as parliamentarians simply couldn't believe our eyes," writes former NDP leader Tom Mulcair in his column for CTVNews.ca
Liberal government not immune from auto thefts: 48 vehicles stolen in recent years
Documents tabled in the House of Commons this week show 48 government vehicles were stolen between January 2016 and February of this year, most of them in Ontario.
CFL suspends Argos QB Chad Kelly at least nine games following investigation
The CFL has suspended Toronto Argonauts quarterback Chad Kelly at least nine games for violating the league's gender-based violence policy.