Environment Canada confirmed a tornado touched down in southern Ontario on Sunday as a powerful storm system moved through the region.
In a statement late Monday, the agency said investigators had determined that a tornado — possibly an EF1 — touched down in the Marmora-Madoc-Actinolite area, approximately 60 kilometers east of Peterborough.
“There was a long trail of damage from at least one tornado and gusty winds,” the agency said. “Damage is preliminarily rated as a high-end EF-1 with peak wind speeds near 110 mph. The final length of the route and the strength of the associated winds have yet to be determined.”
Personnel from Western University’s Northern Tornado Project and Environment and Climate Change Canada began investigating the damage Monday after the storms passed through Sunday evening.
Damage found so far includes homes with roofs partially off, barns completely destroyed, tree limbs down and hydro poles blown away.
Speaking to CP24 earlier in the day, a meteorologist said the storm had an unusually long track.
“It’s entirely possible that we had one or two tornadoes, maybe more, this was a particularly long-lasting rotating thunderstorm that we call a supercell thunderstorm and when you look at the map and the length of time that this was a rotating storm, the total distance is an incredible 140 to 150 kilometers from the initial reports in the Maddock and Tweed areas all the way to areas northwest of Brockville,” meteorologist Jeff Coulson told CP24. “It’s a pretty extensive area of potential damage that surveyors need to look at.”
Coulson said Sunday night’s active weather in that area began around 7:45 p.m. and lasted until 9 p.m. Storms hit some other parts of the province hours later.
Environment Canada said there were widespread reports of damage following the storms, including reports of an overturned trailer in Rockdale, downed trees and hydro mains in Tweed and Madoc and multiple damaged homes in Marmora.
As a result of the damage, the municipality of Tweed has officially declared a state of emergency.
“We’re looking at a very long trail of damage and so we think it’s going to take four teams to really get a sense of how significant this particular event is,” Coulson said.
The storm also knocked out power to about 26,000 Hydro customers across the province, according to Hydro One.
Crews worked around the clock to try to get customers back online, but the utility said Monday that some people may still be without power for a second night
“Hydro One crews are working tirelessly to assess and safely restore power to as many customers as possible following the severe thunderstorms that swept through the province on Sunday,” Hydro One said on its website. “While crews continue restoration efforts, we expect some customers in the worst affected areas of Brockville and Tweed to be without power overnight.”
Havelock, Marmora, Madoc and Tweed, which are east of Peterborough and north of Belleville, were badly hit by the severe weather.
Toronto Hydro was not reporting any major outages as of Monday evening.
On Sunday evening, Environment Canada issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Toronto and much of the Toronto area. The National Weather Service said the GTA could see between 50 and 75 millimeters of rain and wind gusts of up to 70 km/h.
All alerts ended for GTA just before 11pm
The severe storms, which included flashes of lightning and heavy rainfall at times, followed days of intense heat and humidity in southern Ontario.
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