Two tornadoes confirmed for London, Ont. on July 10

As “peak tornado season’ approaches, the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) has confirmed two EF0 tornadoes occurred in London, Ont. on Wednesday July 10, 2024.

“One of the things that we saw as the remnants of Hurricane Beryl was moving across the region is a few videos posted of what appeared to be, funnel clouds, potentially touching down in the region,” said Dr. Connell Miller, an engineering researcher with NTP.

A NTP storm survey team was able to find evidence of wind damage in both locations.

“There is mostly tree damage, and crop damage,” said Miller. “We found evidence of a tornado path going through a field of corn around Gainsborough and Hyde Park, as well as just branches and trees that have been snapped... It was enough to reconstruct a tornado path.”

NTP credits Andrew Colvin and Daniel Hart for contributing video, telling CTV News they rely heavily on social media’s citizen scientists and storm chasers as they don’t have staff to cover all of Canada.

In the West London event, NTP classified the tornado as an EF0 event starting around 4 p.m.

A ground survey on July 11 was completed and NTP estimates wind reached 90 km/h.

In Hyde Park at the same time, another EF0 reached similar wind speeds and had a track length of 2.58 km.

“We're starting to get into peak tornado season,” said Miller. “That tends to be mid to late July to mid-August. Not to say that London is going to get more tornadoes this year, but in general, we're just starting to ramp up in terms of, how many tornadoes we're about to get.”

The NTP says Canada is actually the country with the second highest tornadoes in the world behind the US and that more events like this are moving east from the Prairies to southwestern Ontario.

Before NTP started in 2017, only Environment Canada was tracking tornadoes.

“They were estimating about 60 tornadoes a year, and since we've started, we've shown that number is closer to 120,” added Miller. “It's not because tornadoes have all of a sudden doubled. It was literally the question of if a tornado goes through the forest in northern Ontario, and no one's around to hear it, did that tornado actually happen?”