What Is It About Ottawa, Canada And Tornadoes Lately?

Tornado around Orleans, Ontario on Sunday. 

Last September, a huge tornado struck the Ottawa, Canada area injuring 25 people, destroying dozens of homes and damaging hundreds of other houses, businesses and apartment buildings

That seemed like a rare event in Ottawa and for the Ontario/Quebec border in general.

Then, yesterday, yet another damaging tornado hit the Ottawa area. This one struck in and around the community of Orleans, a little east of Ottawa. It also came pretty close to the path the one last year took, when it caused extensive damage in Gatineau.  

According to the Ottawa Citizen:

"Environment Canada said late Sunday that preliminary information indicates the tornado was a Category EF-1 and may have been on the ground for more than 30 minutes."

There were no reported injuries, but there was plenty of damage. Videos of the storm and its aftermath are below.

In some neighborhoods, roofs were damaged, windows blew out and scores of trees came down.

Lots of video showed a bright white funnel cloud along the dark tail end of a severe thunderstorm, illuminated by a low angle sun.

Ottawa is just a three and a half hour drive from Burlington, Vermont, but just like the September outbreak, Vermont suffered little if any damage.  There were downpours and thunderstorms in the Green Mountain State, but I've heard no reports of severe thunderstorm.

The severe thunderstorms that produced Sunday's Ottawa area tornadoes moved east toward Montreal but weakened dramatically as they crossed southern Quebec.

Here's a view of the tornado approaching a motorist on a bridge near Orleans. At the last second, the motorist zooms out of the way:



Another view of the tornado pulling water from a lake or river:



And here's the narrow, sun-lit tornado pulling apart part of an apartment house roof:

Extreme Flooding Affecting Southeastern Canada

Flood evacuations in Sainte-Marie, Quebec. Photo
by Jacques Boissnot

Here in Vermont, officials are sorting it out with FEMA on the matter of getting federal assistance for at least $2 million in flood damage from a mid-April storm that brought snow melt and high water to much of the state.

Lake Champlain continues to flood, hovering just under 101 feet above sea level. That's very nearly a foot above flood stage. With more rain in the forecast, the Lake Champlain flooding won't go away any time soon. 

North of the border, though, things are much worse, much more dire. Severe flooding is wrecking communities near Ontario, in much of Quebec, including the Montreal metro area and in New Brunswick.

Here's just one sample, as reported by CBC:

"The most dire situation is in Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, a suburb west of Montreal that was inundated Saturday night after the Lake of Two Mountains burst through a natural dike.

More than 5,000 residents were forced to grab what they could and flee as waist-high water filled their streets and homes. Another 1,500 people were evacuated from their homes the following day."

At least 9,000 people in Quebec have been evacuated from their homes due to the flooding.

The Ottawa River between Quebec and Ontario is nearing a record high level set just two years ago. People have filled more than a million sandbags to protect neighborhoods in Ottawa and Gatineau, Quebec. Still, some neighborhoods in both communities are under water.

Gatineau has had terrible experiences with weather lately. Last September, a rare, strong tornado swept through Gatineau, injuring six people and damaging or destroying nearly 1,700 homes.

CBC also had this interesting factoid about weather extremes in Canada so far in 2019:

"The record flooding is expected to push losses for Canadian homeowners from extreme weather to more than $1 billion just four months into this year. The figure was close to $2 billion for all of 2018."

Though floodwaters are receding a bit from flooding along the St. Johns River in New Brunswick, more rain is forecast in saturated southeastern Canada this week.

Serious Flooding In Montreal, Quebec, Ontario, And Great Lakes In New York

Flooding in Rigaud, Quebec. Photo by Paul Chiasson
Canadian Press

It's been a rainy several weeks here in Vermont, but it hasn't been bad enough to cause any serious flooding.  

It's another story, though, in the eastern Great Lakes and in Quebec and Ontario in Canada as a snowy winter gave way to a very rainy spring.

The Montreal area is especially hard hit. Water in Montreal Harbor along the St. Lawrence River is four feet higher than normal.

As I write this Sunday morning, it's still raining in that region.

According to the CBC the flooding is widespread in Quebec.

"As of Saturday evening, Urgence Quebec is reporting that 126 municipalities across the province are affected by rising water levels, especially in the regions of Montreal, the Monteregie, Laval, Maurice, Lanaudiere and the Laurentians."

The Ottawa River in Ontario and Quebec is also causing severe flooding.

The situation along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River system is similar to the situation we here in Vermont faced in the spring of 2011, when we had frequent river flooding, and record flooding along Lake Champlain.

Both disasters were caused by unprecedented record spring rainfall.

Along the shores of Lake Ontario near Rochester, New York, at least 11 inches of rain (or melted snow) has fallen since March 1. Around Montreal, the figure is 13 inches.

Lake Ontario is at its highest level in 20 years, causing extensive flooding and erosion damage along its New York shore. That's especially true on days like today and tomorrow, when strong north winds drive the water onshore.  

Erosion damage along Lake Ontario in Hamlin, New York.
Photo by Carlos Ortiz, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Lake Ontario empties into the St. Lawrence River, which is causing the highest water levels in Montreal and along nearly the entire length of the river in a century.

This echoes 2011, when a record high Lake Champlain emptied as always into the Richelieu River iin southern Quebec, causing severe flooding there.

In New York there are calls to open more flood gates to lower Lake Ontario levels and ease flooding. But that would worsen flooding along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec.

It's all a no-win balancing act. There has simply been way too much rain for any of these water systems to handle.

It's been a very flood prone year in North America. During the winter, there was extensive flooding in California, Oregon and Washington. This weekend, there are floods and mudslides in British Columbia that have already killed two people. 

In the past week, record flooding has slammed areas in and around Missouri. The Carolinas had severe flooding a couple weeks ago.

It goes on and on.

Coldest Spot In Northern Hemisphere Was in Quebec, New England

This graphic generated by the National Weather Service
office in South Burlingotn, Vermont shows
a Sunday depiction of the core of the coldest
air over Quebec and Ontario. Click on the image to
make it bigger and easier to read.  

Congratulations, residents of southern Quebec and maybe northern New England!

By one measure, you were probably the coldest spot in the northern hemisphere last night and this morning.

When analyzing data for forecasts, meteorologists look to levels of the atmosphere above the Earth's surface in layers from a few thousand to tens of thousands of feet above the ground.

That helps the meteorologists understand flow patterns of temperature, moisture and wind, and from there, they can forecast what's going to happen down where we live.

Starting at just a few thousand feet above the Earth's surface, the coldest temperatures found anywhere in the northern hemisphere was southern Quebec last night. That cold spot pretty much extended into northern New England as well.

This area of cold was more frigid than the North Pole, the ice caps of Greenland and the most northern remote regions of Siberia.

Down at the Earth's surface, where we live, there was probably a few places up by the North Pole, extreme northern Alaska and Greenland that were colder than Quebcc, southeastern Ontario and New England.

That's because the sun's angle is still higher here than points north, so the ground levels can be heated more efficiently than at the North Pole. Plus, there's less snow and ice here that in places like Greenland, so what meager heat comes from the sun won't be reflected back to space as much.

The "heat," if you want to call it that, from the sun lingers to a small extent in more southern places like Montreal and Maine during the night, so yeah, we're probably warmer than the high elevation ice cap of Greenland.

And the top of Greenland's ice cap is at a much higher elevation than Quebec or New England, so it is colder there.

Still, the fact that Quebec and New England are colder a few thousand feet above the surface is remarkable to say the least.  The coldest pool of air in the northern hemisphere usually doesn't settle this far south.

Though it might be colder in one or two places at the top of the world, it's certainly cold enough here. Subzero readings this Monday morning are reported in spots across Quebec, Ontario, northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Especially in Quebec, the other eastern provinces of Quebec and New England, it was quite windy Sunday and last night, and will continue to be very gusty today. Wind chills were in the teens or even 20s below in some areas Monday morning.

I don't think I've ever seen wind chill advisories in Vermont, New York, New Hampshire and Maine this late in the season.

Highs yesterday and today in the teens are colder than the normal overnight lows this time of year. A few record lows will fall.

The cold air will retreat north closer to where it belongs starting Tuesday, and there will be a brief period of near normal temperatures Wednesday and Thursday.

Then it gets cold again for next weekend. But not as cold as it is now. It most likely won't be this frigid again in Quebec, Ontario and New England until next November or December.