[URBAN NOTE] Last night's Toronto storms

[rfmcdonald]

I had a great day yesterday, but I should have planned for the possibility that I might have been--say--stranded in a very nice Internet cafe by sheets and sheets of rain and electric-bright lightning descended at a minute's notice from the sky. Maybe I could have brought a jacket, say, or an umbrella. I should have: it was very, very stormy indeed.

Southern Ontario residents will today begin picking up the pieces after a devastating thunderstorm rolled across a large stretch of the province last night, producing several tornadoes that destroyed homes, tore up roofs, flipped vehicles and left at least one person dead.

At one point, Environment Canada had issued a tornado warning extending 500 kilometres between Peterborough and Windsor. The storm, and the occurrence of multiple funnel clouds, is considered a rare occurrence in the region. Recorded winds topped 80 kilometres an hour, but are expected to have been much higher where the tornadoes touched down.

Homes across the Toronto area were damaged, but the heart of the devastation was in Durham, Ont., a small town of 2,500 just south of Owen Sound and about two hours northwest of Toronto. Police in the town told residents last night that one person had died when a tornado went through a conservation area.

[. . .]

A tornado was reported about two hours later in the City of Vaughan, north of Toronto and 200 kilometres away from Durham. It appeared to be centred in the area of Highway 7 and Martin Grove Road. Photos from the site of the Vaughan storm showed many homes where the roof had been damaged, or collapsed entirely.

The City of Vaughan declared a state of emergency last night, which allows it to call in help from Emergency Management Ontario. The city said about 120 homes, mostly in its communities of Maple and Woodbridge, were damaged or destroyed. Some homes also were evacuated in Vaughan. Residents were able to go to the Father Ermanno Bulfon Community Centre on Martin Grove Road last night for shelter.

[. . .]

Another tornado was reported in Newmarket, but damage was said to be much less than in Durham or Vaughan, where police got a first-hand account as the funnel cloud passed their station.

"It passed just south of our parking lot. The standard tornado, the dark funnel cloud, it was moving at quite a speed. Then it would dissipate and come back again," Sgt. Sterchele said. "Several areas have been hit very hard."

Hydro One said it had 63,000 customers without power last night, while Toronto Hydro said it had widespread outages and couldn't say how many people were affected. Trees were knocked down across the entire path of the tornado, from otherwise-unaffected parts of Toronto to the hardest-hit areas in Durham and Vaughan.

[. . .]

He said the storm was rare in the Toronto area, and that it was unusual to see multiple funnel clouds. Once teams survey the damage, they'll be able to say what category the tornadoes were. Most Southern Ontario tornadoes are F0 or F1 storms - F5 being the strongest - but last nights' could possibly have been as high as an F2, which see wind speeds of between 180 and 240 km/h, Mr. Coulson speculated.

Storms of this scale are rare in the region, he said.

"I think it's been a while in the GTA in the immediate area with this number of potential tornadoes," he said. "The frequency in the GTA would not be something I'd be seeing every year."

There were funnel clouds on Jarvis Street, in downtown Toronto, even.

The Toronto newschannel CP24 has links to various viewer-contributed videos from across the Greater Toronto Area. (Thanks, Jerry!)