Researchers were on the ground Sunday afternoon at Canadian Forces Base Borden, investigating a possible tornado in the area the day before.
A video posted to Facebook on Saturday afternoon showed what appears to be a white funnel cloud forming and reaching close to the ground near the military base, located about 20 minutes west of Barrie.
Investigators for the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ont., are in the area today (June 23) trying to determine if it was a tornado.
Dr. Connell Miller, an engineering researcher with Northern Tornadoes Project, arrived with his team at 1:30 p.m. on the grounds of CFB Borden.
“We’ve been investigating the area and found some light signs of wind damage, but it’s too early yet to say whether that was due to a tornado, or if it was just due to strong winds occurring that day,” he said by phone from the scene.
Hunting with only the Facebook video to guide them, the team is trying to triangulate where the video was taken, where it was looking toward and the approximate area of the potential touchdown.
“We use that to create an area of interest and we basically go on a scavenger hunt and look through for any signs of wind damage,” Miller said.
“We saw some trees that had been snapped, with branches on the ground, and some light damage to an old roof, and that’s about it at this point," he added.
One of the challenges they have with this particular investigation, which they must do near the military base, is road access is limited, so they're finding it challenging to complete their survey in their usual way.
“We like to fly drones, but there are some drone restrictions in the area, which makes sense due to the (military) use of the area, so we are seeing what we can see from the ground,” Miller said.
What they hope to find — in order to be able to say it was indeed a tornado — is a thin, narrow path of damage, with a lot of chaotic tree fall patterns as well as debris patterns.
“These are some of the signs we are trying to look for to confirm whether the funnel cloud we saw on the video actually touched down and did some damage,” Miller said.
Back indoors at Environment Canada, meteorologist Shem Willie said in a phone interview on Sunday that “based on what we saw (in the video on social media), there was a report of a possible tornado in that region, around 2:55 p.m.
“On the radar, we did see some minor rotation and there was a severe thunderstorm warning in effect," he said. "There was a note in there that a tornado is possible, but no tornado warning was issued at that time."
No injuries have been reported from Saturday's severe weather.
Nearby Angus last experienced a serious tornado on June 17, 2014, when 103 homes sustained damage from an EF-2 tornado and close to a dozen had to be replaced.
Barrie is also no stranger to tornadic activity, having last experienced a serious twister on July 15, 2021. The EF-2 tornado left a trail of destruction in the city’s south end, leaving dozens of houses uninhabitable.
The city was also hit by a deadly tornado on May 31, 1985. Eight people were killed and hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed. It was one of the worst tornadoes in Canadian history.
