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A treasure trove of documents detailing more than two centuries of tornado events in Canada is now accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
The files are stored in the Environment Canada archives and have been digitized and posted online as part of a multi-year project led by the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) at Western University in London, Ontario.
The Michael Newark Digitized Tornado Archive was officially unveiled last week by the research group and contains reports, photographs and newspaper clippings of Canadian tornadoes, dating back to the country’s first recorded tornado in 1792.
The archive’s namesake collected most of the material in the 1970s and 1980s, when he worked as a meteorologist for Environment Canada.
Newark, who attended the unveiling last week, said he started building the archive because no one had done so before.
“I was shocked to find that there was virtually nothing, not quite nothing, but pretty much, almost nothing about tornadoes in the scientific literature,” he told CBC Radio’s Afternoon ride on Tuesday.
Afternoon ride8:27Ontario Tornado Archives Now Digitized
The Michael Newark Digitized Tornado Archive is a first for Canadian weather history, documenting tornado events in Ontario dating back to the 1700s. Host Matt Allen sits down with Michael Newark, the project’s namesake, to hear more of the story.
The seed for the idea was planted after Newark appeared on CBC Radio in Toronto in April 1974 to tornado that hit Windsor, destroying the local curling club arena and nine dead.
The tornado was one of more than 150 tornadoes that would occur on both sides of the border on April 3 and 4 during the historic Super outbreak of 1974At least 335 people in 13 states and Ontario were killed.
When CBC regular anchor Bruce Smith asked where tornadoes occur and how often they happen, Newark had no answer, he said.
Over a 10-year period, Newark and a number of volunteers scoured libraries, old newspapers, and books to identify old tornadoes and collect whatever information they could find: wind speed, path lengths and widths, damage reports, time of year, direction of travel, and more.
The result was a unique database of Canadian tornadoes that has proven valuable to researchers in the years since, including the NTP, which was founded with a similar goal: documenting every tornado that passes through Canada.
“You can clearly see that he has put his heart and soul into building this archive… with hundreds and hundreds of files that he has compiled,” said David Sills, NTP director.
“There’s a lot of information in there that’s not directly related to the tornadoes, but that’s also interesting. Little notes about how people reacted, or strange types of damage.”
The documents were digitized by Environment Canada and sent to NTP, who added metadata to the files before uploading them to the Western Libraries website. At this time, only files for Ontario events have been uploaded, but the rest will be made available in the coming months.
In 1974, a tornado destroyed the Windsor Curling Club, killing nine people.
Sills noted that some interesting things have already emerged from the new online archive, including never-before-seen footage of the massive tornado that struck Woodstock and Waterford on August 7, 1979. The tornado killed two people and caused an estimated $100 million in damage.
According to Newark’s own handwritten notes, the Super 8 footage was shot by a certain Dr. Dafoe from his front window at 38 Chaucer Place in Woodstock.
Newark’s tireless work also contributed to the formation of its own NTP extended tornado dashboardSills said. The dashboard dates back to 1980, but the plan is to include tornadoes going back to 1792.
Making the archive public will help Canadians better understand the risks tornadoes pose to safety and property, Newark said. The data could also prove valuable in emergency planning, the development of building codes and for insurance companies in assessing risk.
“Think of nuclear power plants, disease control labs, hospitals, factories and all sorts of other buildings that would benefit from knowing about tornadoes and the risk of them occurring,” Sills said.
