Tornado Watch

"There have been studies that have shown the well-known Tornado Alley [in the United States] that stretches from Texas to the Dakotas has been moving east, which means we might see more and more tornadoes in Canada."
"It [Ottawa's Dunrobin twister] gives us a better chance to relate the wind to the damage to the houses."
"We're trying to mitigate the tornado [damage] risk, so we are trying to better estimate losses from experimental simulations."
"In terms of the loads on the buildings, there isn't much in the building codes. We're trying to work toward that."
Jubayer Chowdhury, research scientist, adjunct research professor, Western University engineering school, London, Ontario

"[The estimated loss was $300 million] and that is probably just insured losses."
"We hope to contribute to mitigating loss that will, for sure, happen [in the future]."
Djordje Rominic, researcher, Western twister team

At Western University in London, Ontario a team of researchers is making use of the world's largest tornado simulator in an effort to more fully understand damage done by a devastating cluster of tornadoes that hit last fall in Canada's National Capital Region. As part of the Northern Tornadoes Project at the university, a team of researchers led by Jubayer Chowdhury is examining the effects of tornadoes on multiple buildings located within a neighbourhood block.

In September of 2018 six tornadoes struck the Ottawa-Gatineau (Ontario-Quebec respectively) area, destroying houses and in the process hundreds of people in communities along both sides of the boundary between the two provinces were displaced. The south-west of Ontario has experienced tornadoes in the past, in a wide zone stretching from Windsor to Eastern Ontario, prone to volcanic windstorms.

The town square in Goderich Ontario was ripped apart by a tornado in 2011. At the nearby world's largest salt mine, a worker was killed during that even. Researchers at Western's Wind EEE Dome have turned to the Ottawa tornado cluster that presents a unique opportunity to examine the consequences of those dangerous winds, in an area where few large, mature trees were growing, thus eliminating the possibility of falling or uprooted trees having contributed to the damage.

While the research details remain in the planning stages, the researchers are focusing on the strongest of the tornadoes that struck Dunrobin in the Ottawa area. That violent twister was the strongest tornado to visit Eastern Ontario since 1902. The Dunrobin twister has been identified as intense, striking a residential area. Its strength can be gauged for its standing on the six-level Enhance Fujita scale, rating tornado intensity by damage left behind.

The scale, from EFO to EF5 gave the Dunrobin tornado an EF3 value, with wind speeds of 218 to 266 kilometers an hour, in a scale range that measures as high as winds up to 320 km/h. A not-for-profit research organization, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction has funded the research through a $110,000 grant. At Western, the research team plans to simulate the tornado in their wind dome to enable the team to study its effects on homes in a scale-model block of 22 houses in Dunrobin.

The research is viewed as potentially life-saving, with findings and conclusions that might conceivably benefit insurance companies, builders and homeowners. Its conclusions and recommendations could also be used to strengthen building codes or construction standards in the interests of building structures able to withstand tornado-class winds in a highly-improved construction mode.

According to research conducted nationwide, there are about a hundred tornadoes ripping through parts of Canada annually. Moreover, this kind of research is all too timely, given that scientists have reported a notable rise in tornado activity in recent years, in particular events with multiple twisters in clusters of high-wind damage.

Northern Tornadoes Project // Special to Western News

Damage from an EF3 tornado in Dunrobin, near Ottawa, in September 2018. It was the strongest of a cluster of six tornadoes that day.