Until this week, no one in the Mount Forest area north of Guelph had heard of a tornado touching down in March. In fact, it’s likely no one in Ontario has.
The earliest Ontario twister on record, and Canada's first twister of 2016 swept through at least two farm yards near Clifford on Wednesday.
There were pieces of a barn roof stuck to the high branches of a willow tree on the farm of Nadine and Ron Matthews on Friday. The couple, other members of their family, and neighbours were helping clean up after three of their barns were destroyed by a twister that tore through a very limited rural area about five minutes from the town of Clifford, ten minutes from Mount Forest. The area is about 40 minutes north of Guelph.
“It was absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever experienced,” said Nadine, as she surveyed the damage and supervised the cleanup on Friday afternoon.
A pair of backhoes arrived on the scene and soon began digging up the roots of uprooted trees.
“The help has been incredible,” she said. “Everyone is so kind, offering food and help. We have a wonderful neighbourhood here, and great friends.”
In the 23 years the family has lived on the land, extreme weather has rolled through, taking out a tree or two, a small building, and one grain silo on a neighbouring farm. But nothing like what happened on Wednesday afternoon has been seen before.
The woman, who was home alone at the time, said it was a gorgeous, warm and sunny day one minute, and in very short order it darkened over, the wind howled, and the hail fell.
“I was cleaning dishes in the kitchen, and the dog was on the deck,” she said. The dog began scratching at the door to get inside the house.
“I opened the door to gale-force winds,” she said. The force of the wind made it impossible to close the door once it was open. The pressure whipped through the inside of the house, sending pictures and anything else that wasn’t nailed down, flying.
“There was furniture and other things on the deck, and it was like a big hand just wiped it all off and into driveway,” she said. “I thought, this is not good. Who expects a tornado this time of year?”
A post on the veranda snapped off and Matthews described it as though it was tossed spinning in the air like a feather. The yard was shrouded in a gray, swirling cloud. The noise of creaking and busting buildings filled the air.
“It was just all a wall of gray, with bits of debris flying everywhere.”
Remarkably, the couple’s four horses took shelter in the largest of the three barns as the storm arrived. A part of its roof was ripped off, and the entire structure was lifted off its foundation. But none of the horses were injured.
“But they were all scared out of their wits,” Matthews said, adding that the damage from the weather event is in the hundreds of thousands.
In Clifford, Juanita Wilkins was at her job at an antique shop on Friday. On Wednesday, the Clifford resident was in nearby Fordwich and felt the storm rush in.
“It got very, very windy,” she said. “The sky turned really black, with low clouds moving really fast. And then we got the hail.”
Wilkins said she is no meteorologist, but she has seen a change in the weather in recent years. And a twister in March is unheard of, or so it was up until Wednesday.
“Yes, I think we are seeing more extreme weather,” she said.
Environment Canada is calling the tornado the earliest ever recorded in Ontario.
According to the national weather agency, the twister stretched across an area roughly 3.5 kilometres long and 200 metres wide, but it appears there were very few human structures in its path.
It was estimated to be travelling at 170 kilometres an hour.
The farmyard across the road from the Matthews’ farm also sustained some damage, with a steel bin toppled, a power pole damaged, and several trees up the lane torn apart. But the Matthews bore the brunt of a storm that dropped branches and hail throughout the Clifford area.
Nadine Matthews said Environment Canada officials were on the scene Thursday. Because of the debris path left by the twister it is believed it broke off into two sections. There was debris on both sides of the Matthews farm yard.
“You know those disaster movies you see,” said Matthews. “That’s exactly what I was experiencing. It was the strangest, most surreal experience of my life.”
She is thankful that no living thing was harmed.
