Environment

Overnight Tornado in Quebec Strongest in 15 Years

by Rob Walker | August 5, 2009 at 07:30 am

210 views | 26 Recommendations | 1 comment

Mont-Laurier, Quebec was hit hard on Tuesday by the harshest Tornado to hit the area since 1994.

The tornado would be comparable to an F2 on the Fujita scale and would have winds exceeding 180km/h. About 40 homes were seriously damaged, half of those had to be abandoned. Only two people were injured.

This is in comparison to the 400 homes that were destroyed in the 1994 tornado, that was rated an F3.

Tuesday's tornado was likely an F2 on the Fujita scale used to measure a tornado's intensity, said Environment Canada meteorologist René Héroux.
He said winds would have had to be higher than 180 km/h to do the kind of damage he saw when he toured the town 180 kilometres north of Ottawa on Wednesday morning.