Storm's Characteristics
The Toronto Supercell maintained all the characteristics of a tornado producer as it approached the city. Convective storm detection showed on weather radars a hook echo, a BWER and a strong mesocyclone but the vortex left the ground after the second tornado. Studies were made to try to explain the change in behavior to an extremely high producer of rain. One area of Thornhill, just north of the Toronto City limits recorded 175mm (6.9") of rain in less than 1 hour.
Toronto is situated by Lake Ontario and a lake breeze often develops during the day. This wind brings cooler air at the surface and causes a marine temperature inversion which could have been enough to keep the rotation aloft. To the west of the city, there is the Niagara Escarpment, reaching 1,500 feet above sea level, while the shores of Lake Ontario are just 250 feet ASL. This drop could equally have cut off the rotation from the surface.
The lightning shows that there was a strong peak during the F2 tornadoes, dominated by the positive cloud-to-ground strikes. Studies have shown that this is often the case in tornadic storms. It was followed by a sharp drop and then another peak, but this one dominated by negative lightning during the flooding phase of the storm.
Read more about this topic: Southern Ontario Tornado Outbreak Of 2005
Famous quotes containing the word storm:
“In the very midst of the crowd about this wreck, there were men with carts busily collecting the seaweed which the storm had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of the tide, though they were often obliged to separate fragments of clothing from it, and they might at any moment have found a human body under it. Drown who might, they did not forget that this weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of society.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)