Tornado touched down Sunday in Fergus, Ont., experts confirm

Tornado touches down in Fergus Officials have confirmed that a tornado touched down in Fergus, Ont. amid rare November storm.

A tornado left a path of destruction in Fergus, Ont. on Sunday.

That was confirmed by the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP), based out of Western University in London, Ont., after their experts visited the small community on Monday.

The survey team has given the twister a preliminary rating of EF0, the lowest rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with estimated wind speeds between 90 km/h and 130 km/h.

Reaction from residents

Tabitha Champagne said she’s always keeping an eye on the skies.

“I love weather, so I generally will check the radar every day. Yesterday it looked pretty boring.”

She was at home in Kitchener, Ont. when things started to really pick up around 9:30 p.m.

“All of the sudden, it literally broke loose,” Champagne told CTV News. “It went from 30 km/h winds to, like, 100 [km/h]. It was pouring and there was ice mixed in with it.”

Jay Price was at his Fergus, Ont. home when the storm drew his attention away from the television.

“All of a sudden, you could hear the thunder and the wind just picked up,” he recalled. “It was probably the strongest wind I’ve ever seen in my life. It just whipped right through.”

He spoke to CTV News on Monday morning, while trying to remove a tree that had fallen onto his roof. No one inside the home felt the impact, but Price said it came close to his son’s bedroom window.

“It was probably the weirdest thing I’ve been a part of in my life. It was almost surreal,” he said. “You weren’t sure what was happening.”

Emergency response

While the storm was felt throughout Wellington County, Guelph and the Region of Waterloo, most of the damage was reported near Fergus.

Crews from Centre Wellington Fire Rescue responded to a couple of calls during the storm, but overall, Deputy Fire Chief Jonathan Karn said the community fared pretty well.

“We were out twice last night to a fire alarm as well as some [hydro] wires down due to trees that came down,” he explained “No significant calls for us last night with the storm.”

Tornado investigation

On Monday morning, NTP confirmed a survey team had been dispatched to Fergus to investigate "potentially tornadic damage.”

“[The storm] strengthened as it came through the middle parts of Ontario, through London and Kitchener,” explained NTP executive director David Sills. “As it went through the Fergus area, we saw there was a rollup in the precipitation and there was some rotation, even some evidence of lofted debris, so we believe that there was probably a tornado.”

He said the investigation could also expand to nearby communities.

“Fergus is where we know there was an enhanced area of damage, so we’ll start there. Through the day, we will probably get more reports and we can expand outward from there. This looks like it could be a longer track, maybe. It might even extend toward the Erin area. We have a report of damage there.”

Ontario’s “tornado corridor”

The latest investigation comes after the Northern Tornadoes Project confirmed a tornado hit the community of Ayr, Ont. in August. Initially investigators believed the storm was an EF1, but it was later upgraded to an EF2 tornado after researchers reviewed additional evidence.

Sills said twisters are common through this stretch of southern Ontario.

“From Windsor to north of Toronto, and then out to eastern Ontario, kind of north of [Highway] 401, that area is where we see a lot of our tornado activity in southern Ontario, our own little tornado corridor, and that’s focused there by the Great Lakes.”

It’s also not unusual to see them this late in the season.

“Way back in the 1960’s, there was a tornado that went through the Exeter region in December,” Sills said. “So even December isn’t out of the question. It’s just a question of whether the ingredients come together or not. Sometimes we get these low pressure systems coming through. They pump in that Gulf air and, even if it’s kind of out of season, and if the ingredients are there we can get a tornado.”

- With reporting by Ashley Bacon