1985 Barrie Tornado Outbreak - Other Tornadoes

Other Tornadoes

Most of the tornadic activity at this point moved into southeastern Ontario producing more tornadoes (some of which were significant). These tornadoes formed around the Highway 7 corridor between Lindsay to Madoc (Joe and Leduc, 1993) near the towns of Wagner Lake (F1 at 5:40pm), Reaboro (F1 at 6:05pm), Ida (F2 at 6:20pm), Rice Lake (F3 at 6:25pm), and Minto (F1 at 6:35pm). Most of these tornadoes had conversely shorter paths than the earlier tornadoes, likely as a result of the parent thunderstorms beginning to weaken. In addition, they did not receive as much media attention as the previous tornadoes (those earlier storms were grouped collectively by the media as comprising “The Barrie Tornado”), probably a result of the fact that they didn’t have the opportunity to cause as much damage.

Even so, at the time these more eastern tornadoes were touching down, a final, more isolated supercell developed near Milverton in eastern Perth County which spawned a tornado at 6:15pm. On the ground for approximately fifteen minutes, this tornado tracked a 33-kilometre (21 mi) path of sporadic F3 damage (mainly to outbuildings) from Alma east-northeast towards the Hillsburgh area. Its path was almost parallel to the Grand Valley/Tottenham tornado only a couple of hours earlier.

Meanwhile, lines of severe thunderstorms rapidly developed south of Lake Erie in northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania in the United States, along the cold front itself. Swarms of tornadoes began touching down after 5:00pm, south and southeast of Interstate 90. Some of the hardest hit were towns such as Albion, Atlantic, Bradford, Cooperstown, Newton Falls, Niles, and Wheatland (Grazulis, 1990). Later in the evening, some of these tornadoes crossed into New York, affecting southern Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties the worst (as these supercells moved northeast across Lake Erie into Canada after 7:00pm, they produced baseball size hail near Niagara-on-the-Lake, causing extensive hail damage).