Windsor’s Third Tornado of 2023 Ties It With Ottawa in a Contest That Neither City Wants to Win
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IMAGE COURTESY OF THE NORTHERN TORNADOES PROJECT (NTP)
The NTP has confirmed that Windsor’s third tornado of the season touched down at 10:30 PM on Thursday, August 24th, 2023. NTP’s damage investigation revealed that the tornado was on the ground for 11.6 kilometres and had a maximum width of 470 metres. The estimated maximum wind speed was 125 km/h, which classifies this tornado as an upper-end EF0 and only 10km/h shy of a low-end EF1. They also estimate the forward-motion of the tornado was 80km/h.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE NORTHERN TORNADOES PROJECT (NTP)
We at Instant Weather sent out a “TORNADO POTENTIAL” notification at 10:18 PM that specifically mentions Windsor, 12 minutes in advance of the tornado (https://instantweather.ca/2023/08/25/TN5azD-tornado-potential/) during our livestream (https://www.youtube.com/live/tvNR6bM37S0&t=9053).
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE NORTHERN TORNADOES PROJECT (NTP)
Environment Canada issued a Tornado Warning for Essex County at 10:36 PM, 6 minutes after the tornado began and unfortunately, it did not mention Windsor was in the path; “Locations impacted include: Amherstburg, LaSalle, McGregor, Colchester and Harrow.” (https://instantweather.ca/2023/08/25/GAadqr-tornado-warning-replaces-severe-thunderstorm-warning/).
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE NORTHERN TORNADOES PROJECT (NTP)
Environment Canada did, however, forecast a "High Risk” for severe weather that included the risk for a tornado at 11:29 AM (https://twitter.com/ECCCWeatherON/status/1694733744320487555) along with mentioning a risk of a tornado in their Severe Thunderstorm Watch (https://instantweather.ca/2023/08/24/ZysJ2g-severe-thunderstorm-watch-issued/). Additionally, Environment Canada issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Essex County at 9:34pm (https://instantweather.ca/2023/08/25/lrF3yo-severe-thunderstorm-warning-issued/). However, it had no mention of a tornado risk.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE NORTHERN TORNADOES PROJECT (NTP)
We sincerely hope that everyone stayed safe in the path of these dangerous storms and we’re grateful that we were able to help provide advance notification to our community members who were in the path.
If you do not have our free app and would like to receive our custom notifications such as rotation detected, damaging winds, funnel cloud reports and in rare cases; tornado potential, download our free app at https://InstantWeather.ca/app.
A huge thank you to our passionate community for helping us get the word out about tornadoes and severe weather! Our thoughts remain with all those affected by Thursday’s storms.
