Lake Erie ‘protecting’ Windsor-Essex from tornado conditions in Michigan, says NTP director

According to a professor with Western University, Lake Erie is playing a big role with keeping tornadoes away from Windsor.

You can thank Lake Erie for the lack of tornado conditions in Windsor-Essex so far this year compared to what’s happening across the border in Michigan.

Dr. Dave Sills, the director of the Northern Tornado Project at Western University in London, says Lake Erie can act like a shield for Windsor-Essex at this time of year due to its still cold temperature, calling it important to this area.

“Lake Erie, some of it still has ice out there; it’s still very cold. All of that warm air from the U.S. bumps up against Lake Erie, and the warm air goes over the top of the lake, and we get the cold air,” he said.

“When you get that hot air going over the top and we get the cold air, you’re not going to get a tornado.”

The U.S. National Weather Service has confirmed that an EF-1 tornado did touch down in the Van Buren Township area of Wayne County during a severe thunderstorm on April 4, leaving behind downed trees and power poles.

Saturday night’s tornado is the fifth one in the state so far this year, after four other tornadoes ranging from an EF3 to an EF1 were recorded in southwest Michigan on March 6, killing four people.

Sills says we’re shielded by the Great Lakes to a great extent during the spring months.

“You’ll get a tornado in the Ohio or Detroit area, southern Michigan because they’re not protected, but we are, for a certain amount of time,” he said.

“If you have a storm system coming from the west, we’re not protected by Lake Erie. That’s a little unusual this time of year. You get that Gulf moisture coming up, and that’s more of a southerly flow, and that’s when Lake Erie really can protect us.”

Sills does note that tornadoes can and do happen in April and spring months in Windsor-Essex, with the biggest example being on April 3, 1974, when an EF3 tornado ripped through the city, hitting the Windsor Curling Club on Central Avenue. Nine people were killed during that tornado.

He says the Great Lakes really affect our weather in the winter with snow squalls and in the summer in shutting down the bottom end of storms.

“If we didn’t have Lake Erie sitting there, we would have had tornadoes already, I’m sure. That’s the way it is every spring here,” Sills said.

“All the big stuff happens just south of us, and then we’re kind of waiting for that one storm that will punch through and come from a different direction, a westerly direction, or maybe re-energize once it gets past the lake. It just hasn’t happened this year, thankfully.”

Sills is currently studying changes and a shift in the tornado season, as they’ve noticed over the years that bigger tornadoes that used to happen earlier in the summer in southern Ontario are now happening in the late summer, and they want to find out why.

The Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP), founded at Western University in 2017, aims to better detect tornado occurrence throughout Canada, improve severe and extreme weather understanding and prediction, mitigate against harm to people and property, and investigate future implications due to climate change.

Sills adds it’s difficult to predict what a tornado season is going to look like, as it all depends on the weather fronts that come through the area.