The funnel cloud that touched down in Ayr, Ont., Saturday morning was classified as an F1 tornado, and reached speeds of up to 165 km/h, according to David Sills, the executive director of the Northern Tornados Project.
“It was a bit of a surprise about at 10:40 a.m. on Saturday morning,” he said. “We don’t usually get tornadoes that early in the morning. Usually, tornadoes occur some time in the late afternoon and early evening.”
Sills went on to explain that while it was a bit odd to have a tornado at that time, it is not unheard of, as the proper elements just have to come together, as they did in Ayr on Saturday morning.
“It’s not something that anyone really expected in that area because the ingredients hadn’t shown themselves really, leading up to that point,” he said.
As many Waterloo Region residents also did, Sills said he received a tornado warning alert on his phone in London, Ont. just as the tornado was touching down.
The Northern Tornado Project is based at Western University in London, allowing Sills and his team to mobilize quickly and be in Ayr by 2 p.m. to assess the damage and determine what had happened.
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“It was about five kilometres long, about 230 metres wide,” Sills said. “And based on the damage that we assessed in doing the damage survey, along with damaging winds up to a maximum of 165km/h, which puts it in the category EF1.”
The Enhanced Fujita scale runs from from 0 to 5, with 0 offering winds of 75 km/h and 5 offering winds strong enough to wipe away a house.
The Ayr tornado was on the weaker side of the spectrum.
“It’s surprising that we could actually call this a weaker tornado because there’s quite a bit of damage with that,” Sills added.
The tornado tore the roof off the local Home Hardware, which was full of customers at the time, and flipped rail cars in the area as well.
“The amazing part is that there was no injuries in this whole situation that we encountered yesterday,” North Dumfries Fire Chief Robert Shantz told Global News on Sunday.
He said the news that a tornado had touched down in his community caught him off guard.
“You can’t imagine it until it happens to you,” Shantz said. “You see videos and pictures from other communities that have been hit and you always think, ‘Yeah, someday that could be us.’
“But you never think it’s going to be you, and you don’t want it to be you.”
Ayr resident Kelly Bebenek’s home was among those that were in the path of the tornado.
Her house was empty, aside from the family dog, which escaped unscathed but Bebenek said the aftermath was tough to see when she made it home.
“At first, I had that kind of nervous laugh but I was walking down the road and it was like a scene out of a movie. And I really just started crying. It was so terrible,” she said.
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“Everything is fixable. Everyone is OK and that’s really what matters. It could have been so much worse.”
The tornado in Ayr is the 72nd to occur in Canada in 2024, with 23 of those having occurred in Southern Ontario, according to Sills.
“A good part of the tornadoes that have occurred across the country have been in southern Ontario,” he said. “In fact, the very first tornado this year of the season was, down near Windsor, in March.”
Sills also says the area that surrounds Highway 401 in Ontario is one of the biggest hotspots for tornadoes in Canada.
“Along the 401 corridor is right where the maximum for tornado activity is in southern Ontario,” Sills said “And a lot of that is due to the the lakes being on the northwest and southeast side of that corridor.
“So it really focuses the activity along the 401 and then into Quebec along Highway 20. So, we do have this tornado corridor that the Great Lakes generate for us here.”
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