The F1 tornado at Rice Lake, Ontario. This tornado touched down at about 8:30 pm on the north side of Rice Lake near the Indian River, and then tracked for 10.2 km. A house suffered extensive roof damage, a storage building was destroyed, trees were snapped and uprooted and a swath of corn was flattened. This was one of nineteen tornadoes that struck Southern and Central Ontario on August 20.
Figure 1 depicts a line of severe thunderstorms entering southwestern Ontario from Michigan. These thunderstorms were responsible for the tornado outbreak on this day.
Figure 2 depicts the surface observations at 5:00 pm EDT, which shows a cold front moving through the Great Lakes and a warm front in central Ontario. The warm sector (southern Ontario), brought southerly winds moving across the open waters of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. The advancing cold front and possible interactions with lake-breeze boundaries developed pre-frontal storms across southwestern Ontario, which moved east and brought one of the most significant tornado outbreak in Ontario’s history.
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada (2018), an F1 tornado touched down at 8:30 pm near Rice Lake, ON. The tornado travelled for 10.3 km, but its width was not documented by ECCC. The tornado caused no fatalities, injuries or property damage.
Sources
NWS Weather Prediction Center Surface Analysis Archive. (2017). Surface analysis 21Z Thu Aug 20 2009. Retrieved from: https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/archives/web_pages/sfc/sfc_archive.php
Environment and Climate Change Canada Data. (2018). Canadian National Tornado Database: Verified Events (1980-2009) – Public. Retrieved from: http://donnees.ec.gc.ca/data/weather/products/canadian-national-tornado-database-verified-events-1980-2009-public/
