The executive director of the Northern Tornadoes Project is surprised at how fast a tornado that hit west Windsor was moving.
An NTP investigation has determined that an EF0 tornado hit the west side of the city during a heavy storm on Thursday, Aug. 24.
According to a report from the NTP, a ground survey found damage along a narrow path, including numerous downed trees and branches, roof shingles removed on a number of homes, and damaged fences.
The tornado had an estimated maximum wind speed of 125 km/h and travelled a path 11.6 km in length.
Dr. David Sills, executive director of the Northern Tornadoes Project, says the tornado started in the College Avenue area and ended along Howard Avenue south of Highway 401.
"This tornado was moving almost 80 km/h. It didn't take not even 10 minutes to get from the start to the end because that storm was moving so fast," he says.
Sills says it was a pretty high instability environment in place with this storm with a high amount of lightning.
"There were EF2 tornadoes with that particular storm both in Michigan and in Ohio. Just the fact that we got an EF0 here is pretty lucky," he says.
EF0 is the lowest level on the Enhanced Fujita Scale which is used to assign a tornado a rating based on estimated wind speeds and related damage.
Investigators spent Sunday surveying storm damage from Tecumseh to the Woodslee/Cottam area, plus damage at Belle River, to see if a tornado also touched down in that area.
The Northern Tornadoes Project, based out of Western University in London, documents all tornado activity in Canada.