Active Week in Southern Ontario

It’s been a fairly uneventful week worldwide regarding severe weather events. However, southern Ontario has seen its fair share of significant weather events this past week including a few tornadoes and flooding in Toronto.

Last Tuesday two tornadoes touched down in Ontario causing some damage to homes and barns. The first tornado reported touched down in New Tecumseth, ONT – a town located about 100km from Mississauga. The EF-1 tornado did significant damage to a barn which was almost completely torn apart, and 15 buildings (one with structural damage) along a path of 10 kilometres. Only a horse perished in the tornado; no residents were injured or killed. The second tornado has not yet been confirmed by Environment Canada as of yet but there is speculation that it occurred near Hawkesbury on the same day. The New Tecumseth tornado comes in the wake of the Angus, EF-2, tornado which did significant damage to over 100 homes two weeks ago. Ontario’s tornado count is already at six for the year while the average for tornadoes in southern Ontario is between eight and ten.

Southern Ontario has also seen flooding problems this past Wednesday. A slack flow aloft combined with a disturbance moving in made for fairly slow moving cells that trailed each other in the Toronto area. This generated some fairly significant street flooding in the area, some power outages as well as part of the city’s subway system being put out of order for a few hours. Water rescues also had to be executed due to motorists stranded in their vehicles on one of the city’s large parkways. Some recorded rainfall accumulations were in excess of 30mm in the region Wednesday evening. Since then the water has subsided and the power is back for residents that were left in the dark.