on_wx Posted August 23, 2011 Author Share Posted August 23, 2011 You can see the tornado at the beginning of this video: http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/storm-hits-goderich/16aiu71ug?src=v5%3Ashare%3Afacebook%3A&from=sharepermalink-facebook&brand=MSN Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted August 24, 2011 Author Share Posted August 24, 2011 GODERICH, Ont. Environment Canada says the town of Goderich was given enough time to prepare for Sunday’s tornado that killed one person and left dozens injured. Senior climatologist David Phillip says the town was put under a tornado warning 12 minutes before the storm hit. Full article: http://www.therecord...ironment-canada For this article, what about May 31, 1985? He said Environment Canada was sending extra investigators Monday for a detailed assessment and also to study the path of the twister as it moved southeast out of town “This is the worst damage I’ve ever seen” in 36 years with the agency, he said. Full article: http://www.therecord...rich-devastated I guess their abandoning the plans for an emergency alert system and tornado sirens: • Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillip said the town was given enough time to prepare for the blast with a tornado warning 12 minutes before the storm hit. He said warnings are usually issued between 10 and 15 minutes before an extreme weather event. He said Environment Canada issues its warnings through a variety of systems, adding people are most likely to receive the information through mobile applications. Asked at the media briefing if the disaster would prompt calls for a better warning system, McGuinty said it could never be perfect. “Mother Nature does not always give us predictability,” he said. Full article: http://www.therecord...e-start-cleanup Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted September 27, 2011 Author Share Posted September 27, 2011 Hello, Southern Ontario. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNmd80tC8sc&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V39Ce1uLDqQ&NR=1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted January 4, 2012 Author Share Posted January 4, 2012 No surprise here... but the Goderich tornado made CTV Southwestern Ontario's top news story of 2011. CTV SWO is our main media outlet in SWON outside the Greater Toronto Area/Golden Horseshoe. http://swo.ctv.ca/se...30/?hub=SWOHome The tornado caused $75 million in damage to the town and outlying areas. Long and slow recovery for the people of the Lake Huron shoreline city. Edit, suppose I should add in recent months CTV SWO has added an emergency warning crawl on their channel that relays weather bulletins. Step forward in the right direction in building an Ontario emergency alert system. The county warning map and other crawls were abandoned about 10 years ago by media outlets when Environment Canada modernized and stopped using the county based warning system in exchange for split counties or city predetermined warning zones, but slowly tv media outlets are bringing back the crawls recently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted January 4, 2012 Author Share Posted January 4, 2012 And to add one more thing, I was listening to the live radio conference from the OPP and Environment Canada and this one EC investigators comment struck me odd... "This is the worst damage I've ever seen," said Environment Canada's Randy Mawson, who has been investigating storms for 36 years. From this article: http://swo.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110822/goderich-tornado-help-rebuilding-110822/20110822/?hub=SWOHome Which means he started investigating storms in 1975 with Environment Canada WFO Toronto and must have witnessed the two F4's of August 1979, one which leveled part of the city of Woodstock, the 1982 Reeces Corners F4 tornado, the entire May 31 1985 tornado outbreak where large and violent wedge tornadoes plowed through major cities and wrought severe destruction and a dozen deaths, the April 1996 F3 tornadoes that demolished rural towns, and the August 20 2009 southern ON/GTA tornado outbreak. But the Goderich tornado had the worst damage he's ever seen? I don't know, his statement just seemed out of place. Guess he forgot. And so have most other people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHM Supercell Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Every local news station in Southern Ontario needs to transmit severe weather warnings issued by Environment Canada. It is clearly seen that no one gets the warning posted by Environment Canada. This can be seen when people make comments like "we had no warning" or "I was watching TV and my roof collapsed. I didnt realize we were under a tornado warning". If stations brodcasted EC's warnings (albeit very un-informative) people would have much more time to prepare and death toll would be redused in devestating tornadoes. Regarding Randy Mawson's statement. What he said was foolish. Either he did not do any of the damage surveys during any of those outbreaks foster mentioned or he is just making the Goderich tornado sound more severe than it was. The Goderich tornado was devestating however it does not compare to tornadoes like Woodstock or Barrie at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted January 4, 2012 Author Share Posted January 4, 2012 Every local news station in Southern Ontario needs to transmit severe weather warnings issued by Environment Canada. It is clearly seen that no one gets the warning posted by Environment Canada. This can be seen when people make comments like "we had no warning" or "I was watching TV and my roof collapsed. I didnt realize we were under a tornado warning". If stations brodcasted EC's warnings (albeit very un-informative) people would have much more time to prepare and death toll would be redused in devestating tornadoes. Regarding Randy Mawson's statement. What he said was foolish. Either he did not do any of the damage surveys during any of those outbreaks foster mentioned or he is just making the Goderich tornado sound more severe than it was. The Goderich tornado was devestating however it does not compare to tornadoes like Woodstock or Barrie at all. Or even the Durham to Georgian Bay Club/Craigleith tornado on Aug 20 09. Several videos showed it was a kilometre wide or larger violent wedge tornado with its parent supercell that destroyed numerous houses and businesses along its track which we all saw on the news. Though, initially rumoured to be an F3 but confirmed a F2, you'd think some of that fresh damage would have reminded the investigator that Goderich is not the ultimate tornado to have ever hit Ontario. The blatant neglect of recent and historical severe storms in ON from the weather service, media, and government from the 90s right up to Goderich is absurd. We live in tornado alley. Into the late 90s we used to have tornado drills in school, but they stopped. There was that news article last year stating the federal government was buying weather radios for schools in tornado prone areas of the country. I wonder if that also includes implementing tornado drills again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHM Supercell Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Environment Canada is a very narrow minded weather service. They dont look at historical weather data, which when one does it can be seen that Southern Ontario is more tornado prone then people think. If Environment Canada were to look at more then the present day then they would be able to prepare better for upcoming severe weather/tornado events that are going to happen, its just a matter of when. EC could implement a new warning system and propse an EAS to the government but this is all just wishing, real EC doesnt have the budget or "man power"(or so they say) to do this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted January 4, 2012 Author Share Posted January 4, 2012 Environment Canada is a very narrow minded weather service. They dont look at historical weather data, which when one does it can be seen that Southern Ontario is more tornado prone then people think. If Environment Canada were to look at more then the present day then they would be able to prepare better for upcoming severe weather/tornado events that are going to happen, its just a matter of when. EC could implement a new warning system and propse an EAS to the government but this is all just wishing, real EC doesnt have the budget or "man power"(or so they say) to do this. They have been proposing an EAS to the government for decades. There is or was the CANALERT that has been in development since at least 1997, but I assume it has been scrapped. Now we have the Ontario Red Alert System, which as 2011 has proven, has been a huge public notification disaster with no immediate concern from EMO for redevelopment or improvement. But, it's not up to EC to implement a full scale mirror image US EAS to Canada. It's up to the CRTC and other government branches. And so far...all they have delivered is the red alert program. You would have thought with all the large and violent tornadoes and outbreaks especially from the 50s to the 80s that we would be on par with the NWS and other US practices of rebroadcasting weather warnings, but I suppose we once were building up to that until the EC modernization that completed in 2003. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHM Supercell Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Why EC moved forward with their "modernization" in 2003 is beyond me. I remember talking to Geoff Coulson and he satated that people would have a better understanding of areas effected and if they were in those areas by using pre-determined zones. That was a stupid decision by EC and if anything they went backwards from their pre 2003 warning system. I was looking at some text products from the lates 90's and alot of them were storm based. Its a real shame to see that EC got away from that. While it seems NWS is taking steps forward, EC is just digging them selves a deeper hole and going no where. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted January 4, 2012 Author Share Posted January 4, 2012 Why EC moved forward with their "modernization" in 2003 is beyond me. I remember talking to Geoff Coulson and he satated that people would have a better understanding of areas effected and if they were in those areas by using pre-determined zones. That was a stupid decision by EC and if anything they went backwards from their pre 2003 warning system. I was looking at some text products from the lates 90's and alot of them were storm based. Its a real shame to see that EC got away from that. While it seems NWS is taking steps forward, EC is just digging them selves a deeper hole and going no where. August 24 2011 is the pinnacle of the modernization and continuous cutbacks, plus the recent announcement of layoffs, burdened on Environment Canada. Practically an area half the size of Pennsylvania put under a long several hour duration tornado warning for three weak short tracked tornadoes. And about the old warnings... it's funny how some years we get storm based detailed warnings for some events, and other times it's blanket warnings up to hours before storms arrive with generic "storms over the above mentioned regions". It's also funny how they eliminated end times to all watches and warnings all them years back, but then whatever day that was in 2011 they had end time stamps on all the severe warnings. EC is very eclectic with no standards. Same applies for cities in the path. Once in a blue moon a warning will mention a city the storm may be near, but 99.9% of the time they'll warn 100km ahead of the storm without saying who is going to be affected unless you can decode their warning zones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyhb Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Which means he started investigating storms in 1975 with Environment Canada WFO Toronto and must have witnessed the two F4's of August 1979, one which leveled part of the city of Woodstock, the 1982 Reeces Corners F4 tornado, the entire May 31 1985 tornado outbreak where large and violent wedge tornadoes plowed through major cities and wrought severe destruction and a dozen deaths, the April 1996 F3 tornadoes that demolished rural towns, and the August 20 2009 southern ON/GTA tornado outbreak. But the Goderich tornado had the worst damage he's ever seen? I don't know, his statement just seemed out of place. Guess he forgot. And so have most other people. Yeah I'll say Barrie for sure (5/31/85) was far worse than this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QcSevereWx Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Here in Qc, we dont even have ''tornado watch''. We go from nothing, to severe thunderstorm warning with the possibility of a tornado ( tornado alert). ''SOME OF THESE THUNDERSTORMS ARE PARTICULARLY INTENSE AND ONE OF THEM COULD PRODUCE A TORNADO.'' The major problem is that if you dont watch TheWeatheChannel or www.meteo.gc.ca, you're screwed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted January 5, 2012 Author Share Posted January 5, 2012 Here in Qc, we dont even have ''tornado watch''. We go from nothing, to severe thunderstorm warning with the possibility of a tornado ( tornado alert). ''SOME OF THESE THUNDERSTORMS ARE PARTICULARLY INTENSE AND ONE OF THEM COULD PRODUCE A TORNADO.'' The major problem is that if you dont watch TheWeatheChannel or www.meteo.gc.ca, you're screwed. A popular addition to our severe thunderstorm warnings in Ontario, too. "Isolated tornadoes are possible with some of these storms.". Why not issue a tornado warning on the intense area of rotation? TWN can be horrid during severe weather outbreaks. Sometimes they loop the same recorded coverage for an hour before updating the situation. Also, they don't usually focus on any one storm they just show the whole regional radar and talk about how scary the storms look on radar so if you see threatening weather in your area be sure to send them photos and call their storm line etc. Well, that's just for storms in Southern Ontario. They probably don't even talk about storms outside of Ontario. We don't get MeteoMedia in ON, so I can't say anything about them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QcSevereWx Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 We don't get MeteoMedia in ON, so I can't say anything about them. Meteomedia is our WeatherNetwork. It's the same thing here, they dont focus on one storm, and you dont know if a storm is capable of producing a tornado ( they dont show de storm velocity). The radar display is awfull too. I dont understand why, it's useless. I, like everybody else, use the Mcgill radar 120km - 240km or Grlevel3. They use some sort of Southern Quebec composite, but worse. It's been a while since the last F3 in southern Qc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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