Tornado confirmed west of Glencoe after severe storm sweeps through southwestern Ontario
Officials at the Northern Tornadoes Project have confirmed that a tornado touched down west of Glencoe, Ont., on Thursday, leaving a narrow path of damage through rural Middlesex County.
"We know it's a tornado," said David Sills, director of the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University. "There's definitely some video of the tornado actually doing the damage."
Sills said the tornado developed from a rotating supercell thunderstorm that also produced large hail as it moved southeast from the Sarnia area toward London.
Investigators found damage to numerous trees and at least one farm that appeared to have been hit particularly hard. An RV was also overturned along the tornado's path.
The tornado was classified as EF0 on the EF-Scale, which measures the severity of tornadoes from EF0 to EF5.
"So far we're rating that damage at EF0, which is the lowest on the scale," Sills said. "The winds with an EF0 tornado can get to 130 kilometres per hour."
Thursday's tornado west of Glencoe is the fourth confirmed or preliminarily confirmed tornado to strike the broader London region since early May, following tornadoes near Lucan, through south London and near Melbourne.
A damage survey team will return to the area on Friday to determine the tornado's final rating, as well as its length and maximum width. Sills said the rating could be upgraded to EF1 after a more detailed assessment.
Amanda Vanderkuyl, who lives south of Glencoe, watched the storm develop from her horse farm while keeping an eye on her 14 horses and her two young children.
"I came out to my front porch and looked up and I could see the rotation starting, which was a bit alarming," she said.
After spotting what she realized was a tornado, she and her husband monitored the storm from opposite sides of their home while keeping their children indoors.
"It blew in like a freight train," Vanderkuyl said. "I had rain, I had hail, I had winds... It was a stressful 10 minutes."
Despite the close call, her property escaped with only minor damage, including toppled plants.
"My heart was pounding," she said. "I'm happy that it stayed west of me."
cbc.ca
