‘Very clear path’: Researchers analyze tornado north of London, Ont.

The aftermath of a tornado in Lucan, Ont. CTV London's Brent Lale reports.

A research team from Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) spent Canada Day near Lucan, Ont. analyzing the aftermath of an EFO Tornado.

“There’s some markings in the crops here where the tornado went through,” says Aaron Jaffe, NTP survey lead.

“It left a very clear path. You can see it really well from the drone. There’s trees here that had big branches snapped.”

That location was just north of Elginfield Rd. on Richmond Street. One concession west on Saintsbury Line, the path went right through the property of Brenda Hawkins.

“It was the loudest, sound I’ve ever had ever heard,” says Hawkins.

Pointing through the bean field toward the woods behind her home, she showed the damage.

“You can see there where it went through. Lots of tin from the old barns that was a little bit loose and that just gathered in the field. I thought for sure the whole thing was going to be going. There’s a little bit of cleanup”.

The tornado came through quickly Monday afternoon. Some residents are questioning why a weather alert wasn’t sent out notifying people of potential danger.

“To be perfectly clear on the timeline, the funnel cloud was spotted at 3:25 p.m. and Environment Canada didn’t put out the notification to 3:49 p.m.,” says Lucan-Biddulph Mayor Cathy Burghardt-Jesson.

“It was over and done with. So we can only notify on our social media channels if we have the alert from Environment Canada.”

NTP says it is not uncommon for smaller storms to come and go before a notice can be issued.

“In a perfect world, every single tornado that happens in Canada would have a warning beforehand,” says Jaffe.

“Hopefully one day we can get to that, but it is quite difficult to do that for these weaker events like this one. Would it be nice if this one was warned? Absolutely and hopefully, we reached something close to that one day.”

In their early assessment, NTP believes there could have been more than one tornado touching down in the Lucan area. They will take their evidence back to the office to analyze.

While they do their work, officials in Lucan will look into what lessons could be learned from this incident.

“The next time our emergency control group gets together, we’ll kind of talk about what happened and the timeline,” says Burghardt-Jesson.

“What was in our control and how we can serve our residents better in the event that we’re faced with another weather emergency”.

Over the next few days, the Hawkins family will begin picking up the pieces left behind, thankful the path missed their home and other barns.

“It could have been a lot worse,” says Hawkins.