Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) confirmed on Thursday that an EF0 tornado touched down in the Parry Sound region.
NTP tweeted this afternoon that a survey yesterday(Wednesday) in the Parry Sound region turned up an EF0 tornado.
An NTP ground / drone survey yesterday in the Parry Sound region turned up an EF0 tornado. The tornado occurred ahead of a squall line that moved across central and eastern Ontario on July 20th. Damage along the narrow path was mostly to trees, max wind speed 115 km/h. #ONStorm pic.twitter.com/TWMogpqt80
— Northern Tornadoes Project ?? (@westernuNTP) July 22, 2021
Dr. David Sills, Executive Director of the project tells My Parry Sound Now some damage was reported after a big squall line went through on the morning of July 20th.
“When we investigated we found a long narrow path of damage. It stretched about two and a half kilometres long and 100 metres wide. The worst of it seemed to go though Bear’s Paw Lane which kinda sticks out into Whitestone Lake. The damage ended up being rated as an EF-0 at a maximum wind speed of 115 kilometres per hour,” Dr. Sills said.
Dr. Sills explained that the EF scale goes from 0, at the weakest, to 5, at the strongest, and an EF-0 wind speed range on the EF scale goes from 90 to 130 kilometres per hour.
“So we are right about in the middle of that range with 115 kilometres per hour, that’s a weak tornado … when you get up to EF2 and EF3 you’re talking about strong tornadoes and that’s kind of getting into the damage that was seen with the Barrie tornado recently. Going above that into 4 and 5 those are violent tornadoes and we rarely see those in Canada and when we do it’s catastrophic damage,” Dr. Sills explained.
And if you happen to come across sketchy weather that hints to a tornado, he said the best place to be is indoors and away from windows.
“You want to just basically keep away from any kind of debris that might hit, so an interior room like the bathroom in the house or the basement if possible,” he says.
And if you’re caught outdoors, Dr. Sills again says the main thing is to try to avoid debris(like trees falling on you).
He says, “Get down close to your ground so flying debris doesn’t hit you and if you’re in a vehicle that’s usually a good place as far as the protection from lightning and if you crouch down low in the vehicle and get below the window level you’ll be out of the way from debris too,”.
He finished saying, “If there’s a watch issued that’s the time to get inside and if a warning is issued that means things are actually happening and that means take cover immediately.”
Damage along the narrow path was mostly to trees with a maximum wind speed of 115 km/h.
The data cites damage reported at Whitestone Lake and south of Dunchurch after a storm passed through the area.