DRYDEN — Mother Nature has caused a fair bit of clean up for some Northwestern Ontario residents.
Residents of Dryden and Vermilion Bay were placed under another tornado warning when a storm approached rapidly on Sunday evening, causing road blockages, power outages and building damage.
“At this time, we have not received any reports that would confirm one way or the other, yes or no, whether or not it was due to a tornado (touching down),” said Steven Flisfeder, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.
“The only reason that we think there could have been a tornado is based on radar imagery.”
Environment Canada issued the tornado warning on Sunday shortly after 5:30 p.m. CDT. It followed another one about a week prior — in that case, weather officials said they didn't receive any reports of one touching down.
“So, areas like Dryden, Ignace, Atikokan, those kinds of areas, we have seen reports of downed trees, roads blocked by downed tree limbs, some small hail reports, but that is the extent that we have at this time,” Flisfeder said on Monday.
Due to the severity of the storm, residents were being reminded to contact the City of Dryden for assistance with downed trees, Dryden mayor Jack Harrison said.
“The residents were out last night and early morning cleaning up as well, so I took a drive around the city, and it looks like a clean-up in progress,” he said. “Some of the residents were cutting trees off hydro lines, which we do not recommend — it is very dangerous.”
To keep community members safe and out of harm's way, the city and Hydro One have started cleaning up the storm's damage Harrison said.
“And we did hear from Hydro One that they are out and they have a map out that shows where the outages are around town and they said that they are working towards restoring those outages.”
Despite the storm’s severity, it didn't pass by the airport — where Environment Canada's monitoring station is — resulting in inaccurate wind readings, Flisfeder said.
“The airport itself only gusted to about 25 kilometres per hour, but we know that, based on the images we saw and the radar information, the winds were much stronger than that,” he said.
For the most up-to-date information, visit the Environment Canada weather alerts page.
