Speaking from his home in Lakefield, Ontario, Ed Paleczny is still visibly shaken by the terrifying moments he shared with his wife last weekend as they watched a storm rip apart the log cabin they were sheltering in.
“Until you’re in a house with the roof ripped off and the sound of a train coming through your door, you’ll never know how it feels,” Paleczny said.
The pair were caught up in the destructive storm, a rare and fast-moving event known as a right, that swept through Ontario and Quebec on Saturday. Before he arrived, many families had been enjoying a sunny long weekend.
Earlier that day, an intrusive emergency alert was activated for the Toronto area following a report of 132 km/h winds at the Kitchener, Ontario airport, sending messages to television and radio stations as well as telephones. mobiles.
But many people in the Peterborough area had no idea what was in store for them, unless they were paying attention to the weather forecast. The same alert was not sent to that region.
Paleczny’s wife and daughter had just returned to their cabin after a boat ride on Stoney Lake. Nearby, a neighbor’s teenagers were paddling their kayaks, while another group had just launched out on a pontoon boat.
It was only moments later that they saw the first signs of a brewing storm.
“The sky went dark, then it turned green. And then there was a loud roar, and then there was a white wall of rain coming towards us,” Paleczny said.
“I can’t believe that with today’s technology, [there was] absolutely no alerts on my phone, my wife’s phone, [or] our daughter’s phone.
‘That’s it. we’re done
Some people did not manage to reach a safe place in time. The storm claimed the lives of 11 people.
One of them, a 64-year-old woman, was struck by a falling tree while camping in the Peterborough area. Another victim, a 61-year-old Lakefield man, died after a tree fell on him.
The storm left a trail of destruction across southern Ontario and Quebec, toppling trees, damaging buildings and leaving an estimated 900,000 homes and businesses without power at its peak.
Paleczny said his family had only a few minutes to take shelter in their cabin.
“While trying to keep the door closed, we saw the wooden frame break. The real wooden frame was flapping in the wind and the metal roof was ripped off,” he said. “My wife was thinking, ‘This is it. We’re done.'”
Despite extensive damage to their property, Paleczny and his family survived. He is now looking for answers as to why he and his neighbors did not receive advance notice.
“A little warning would have gone a long way,” he said.
Why was the severe storm warning not activated?
Saturday’s deadly storm was the first time Canada had issued an intrusive broadcast alert for an extremely severe storm warning. Until last year, only tornado warnings triggered emergency broadcast to cell phones and on radio and television programming.
But in June 2021, Environment Canada expanded its weather warning program to include a very specific subset of extreme storm warnings. Under the changes, an alert is only activated for severe thunderstorms forecast to reach wind speeds of at least 130 km/h or those forecast to produce hail of at least three inches.
Peter Kimbell, a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment Canada, explained that as the derecho moved across southern Ontario, forecasters were not so sure that winds would reach 80 mph (130 km/h) by the time the storm hit the area. of Peterborough.
That meant the alert did not go off for the Peterborough area, because it did not meet the threshold. Although it was issued for the neighboring Lindsay-Northern Kawartha Lakes region, he said.
Lessons learned: Is the threshold too high?
Kimbell said it’s worth discussing whether 130 km/h is the correct threshold going forward, especially considering much of the damage was caused by peak winds in the 120-130 km/h range.
“There is a balance between warning people about extreme events and over-warning,” he said.
Kimbell explained that while storm warnings are always available through various media channels, as well as through Environment Canada’s WeatherCan. website Y applicationit would not be practical to activate intrusive alerts for every thunderstorm.
“I think people would start to get mad at us pretty quickly, so we really restricted it to those that are going to be particularly notable,” he said.
George Kourounis, a Toronto-based storm chaser who is an explorer-in-residence with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, said getting the balance right is a challenge.
“If you give too many warnings, people become complacent,” he said.
He thinks an extreme storm watch is the right idea, though he suggests the wind speed threshold could probably be lowered.
“They could probably reduce that a little bit: 120 km/h will still do tremendous damage, especially if it’s a wide swath, like these entitlement events,” Kourounis said.
“I think this particular storm will be a very good test bed for meteorologists to issue these types of warnings, to look back and see how effective it was.”
While Paleczny is thankful he survived Saturday’s storm, he said he hopes Canada’s warning system improves before another one hits.
“We definitely need a better warning system that is responsive … that separates a regular storm from a powerful and damaging storm that is creating a path of destruction,” he said.
Reference-www.cbc.ca