Tuesday’s violent storm not only caught West Ferris residents off guard but even the experts at Environment Canada.
The storm swept through a localized area of North Bay in the West Ferris area with most of the damage on Regent Court, Mulligan, and Charlton.
See that story: Storm damage in West Ferris
Geoff Coulson is a Warning Preparedness Meteorologist with Environment Canada. He says at 4:30 yesterday not much was showing up on the radar to indicate a nasty localized storm was approaching North Bay.
“It did not look like anything in the way of lightning activity with the storm. There was some shower activity in the area at the time but every once in a while we can get these powerful bursts of wind generated from something that is not yet producing lightning and that seems to be the case of what happened in the North Bay area yesterday afternoon, Coulson told BayToday.ca Wednesday morning.
Environment Canada will not be sending an investigator to the damaged area. From what they have seen, they are confirming it as a micro burst and definitely not a tornado.
“Looking at the damage from the pictures it seems to be consistent with winds that would have been up around 90 to 100 plus kilometers per hour to knock those trees over and fencing, things of that nature and yet very localized in terms of the damage that it did,” said Coulson.
“If there were cars thrown and roofs taken off buildings we would usually send someone to investigate to get a better rating on the Enhanced Fujita Damage Scale so we use that both for estimating the winds in micro bursts or down bursts events as well as tornadoes. With everything we have seen and heard about this particular event, it looks like it fits into the lowest level of that damage scale.”
Coulson says this storm is a lesson learned that people should always keep their eyes on the skies because weather changes can catch everyone off guard sometimes.
