Three tornadoes confirmed in Huron County, says Western University project

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

On Saturday evening, three confirmed tornados touched down in Huron County amid extreme weather in the community, touching down between Goderich, Clinton and Londesborough while, miraculously, causing minimal damage and no injuries.

Tornado warnings were issued for the area throughout the afternoon as skies darkened and winds intensified. Then, funnel clouds were observed and photographed by many on social media between Goderich and Clinton and then closer to Londesborough and Walton.

According to the University of Western Ontario’s Northern Tornadoes Project, the first of the three tornadoes touched down over Lake Huron at 6:30 p.m. as part of a long-lived supercell thunderstorm, causing no damage.

The aforementioned supercell was then said to weaken as it approached the shores of Lake Huron, but intensified again, producing the second tornado equidistant between Goderich and Clinton near Porter’s Hill Road and through to the Shelter Valley campground. There, the tornado was said to reach wind speeds of 125 kilometres per hour, where it damaged a barn, another outbuilding and downed several trees.

The track length of this tornado was 6.24 kilometres with a path width of 190 metres, coming from the southwest.
It then continued inland, touching down once again in the former hamlet of Harlock - northeast of Londesborough, southwest of Walton and north of Kinburn - where tree damage was reported and the tornado reached estimated wind speeds of 90 kilometres per hour.

All three tornadoes were given a rating of EF0, which is technically the weakest category on the Enhanced Fujita scale. Such tornadoes have wind speeds of between 105 and 137 kilometres per hour.

This tornado had a track length of 4.68 kilometres and a maximum path width of 330 metres, coming from the west.
CBC News spoke to Deborah Caira and she said that she and her family were just sitting down to have dinner and saw a cloud formation working its way towards their house. She then told the national news outlet that doors in the house were shaking on their hinges and that it felt as if the whole house was shaking when the tornado went through.

She said they took cover in a hallway in the house, which doesn’t have a basement and, in around a minute, it was all over. It damaged large trees around their property and threw their vegetable stand, which she estimated weighs between 400 and 500 pounds, into their driveway, just inches from their car.