Environment Canada (Canada’s national weather service) has completed its damage survey, and concludes that two different tornadoes hit Essex County, Ontario on Wednesday evening.
I corresponded yesterday with Geoff Coulson, Warning Preparedness Meteorologist at Environment Canada’s Toronto office, and he said that “the cell over the Detroit River just west of LaSalle went rapidly from a healthy rain shower with no lightning to a supercell producing a tornado around 7:06 PM. The first report the Weather Centre received of a tornado in LaSalle was around 7:20 PM, a good 14 minutes after the tornado had already hit.”
According to the Environment Canada official storm summary, the LaSalle tornado was an Enhanced Fujita Scale 1 (EF1) tornado with peak winds between 84 and 109 miles per hour (135-175 kph). The maximum damage path was 270 to 325 yards wide (250-300 meters), and the twister’s path was 1.2 miles long (2 kilometers).
A short time later, a second tornado formed over the Windsor area. The worst damage occurred along a track from the area of Walker Road between Sydney Avenue and Seymour Boulevard extending towards the vicinity of the E.C. Row Expressway and Central Avenue. This tornado was rated as a high-end Enhanced Fujita Scale 2 (EF2), with peak winds between 124 and 137 miles per hour (200-220 kph). The damage path was five miles long (8 kilometers) and nearly 220 yards wide (200 meters).
According to Geoff Coulson, “the last EF2 anywhere in Essex County was June 6, 2010 near Harrow. The last EF2 in Windsor itself was March 19, 1948…(and) the strongest tornado to hit Windsor aside from the EF2 in 1948 was an EF4 on June 17, 1946.”
There have now been a confirmed seven tornadoes in Ontario so far this year, compared to the long-term seasonal average of twelve tornadoes.