As Kevin Murray stood on his porch, the sky suddenly turned dark and the wind surged, driving the rain sideways.
asserted
wind → stand → rain
He ordered his four children to the basement.
asserted
He → order → basement
He watched as a trampoline careened across the yard; the house shook, and Murray knew it was time to follow the family downstairs.
asserted
it → watch → family
Less than 15 minutes later, he emerged from his Perth County home to a scene of devastation across his two properties.
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he → emerge → properties
Towering trees that once lined the long country driveway like a colonnade lay in ruins.
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that → tower → ruins
The barn was reduced to kindling, save for one metal wall bearing a precariously affixed sign that was a wedding gift from his wife some 14 years ago.
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that → reduce → wife
“I was shocked but more sad because we have our name on the barn and now it’s gone,” Murray said.
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Murray → have → barn
The storm that rolled through southern Ontario on the afternoon of Sept. 2 cut a wide path.
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that → roll → path
In Toronto, it twisted and tossed the bleachers at Rogers Stadium and flooded the streets of Vaughan.
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it → twist → Vaughan
In farming communities west of Waterloo, it levelled barn after barn and flattened fields of corn.
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it → level → corn
Debris and downed hydro lines blocked roads around Brodhagen, not far from Murray’s farm.
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Debris → down → farm
The question on everyone’s mind was: Had a tornado come through?
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tornado → come → mind
At Western University, a team of students with the Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory (CSSL) was getting ready to find the answer.
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team → get → answer
The search for evidence
The severe weather forecast for Sept. 2 had proven all too accurate.
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forecast → prove → Sept.
Reports of property damage, particularly around Brodhagen, north of Stratford, were beginning to filter into the lab, established in 2024 to house the Northern Tornadoes, the Northern Hail and the Northern Mesonet research projects.
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Reports → begin → Tornadoes
Matthew Woodward, a 22-year-old geography major, got tapped to assemble a team.
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Woodward → tap → team
The University of Waterloo student grabbed his go-bag — packed with water, food, a laptop and some overnight supplies just in case — and prepared to head out for what would be his 21st investigation this year.
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what → grab → case
For the past four summers, Woodward has served as a CSSL intern, returning each season to do forensic analysis and research in the wake of Canada’s worst storms, helping piece together the what and why.
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Woodward → serve → what
The paid 17-week internship program, launched in 2022 and open to any university student in Canada, places teams in London, Ont., Winnipeg and Olds, Alta., known as “hailstorm alley.”
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program → launch → alley
On Sept. 3, just after noon, Woodward and three graduate students pulled up to the Murray farm in a white pickup emblazoned with the CSSL logo.
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Woodward → pull → logo
The team, which had already visited 20 sites that morning, had spotted the collapsed barn via drone images captured from another battered property more than a kilometre away.
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which → visit → property
Because tornado damage gets cleaned up quickly, speed matters, explained internship co-ordinator Connell Miller, who is also director of the Northern Mesonet Project.
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who → clean → Project
“The more preserved a site is by the time we get there, the more information we can glean from it.”
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we → get → it
Even as the team arrived, Murray and his family were already clearing debris, a tractor scooping up downed branches.
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tractor → arrive → branches
With permission, the students fanned out, searching for clues.
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students → fan → clues
One day, says a climatologist, Toronto will get a true “climatologically extreme” storm, says an expert, and the results will be “beyond
One day, says a climatologist, Toronto will get a true “climatologically extreme” storm, says an expert, and the results will be “beyond
Their first questions were practical:
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questions → say → storm
Was the barn door open when the storm hit?
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storm → hit → ?
The answers mattered.
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answers → matter → ?
The team examined the remnants, inspecting the nails and screws that had once connected the roof to the walls and the walls to the foundation.
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that → examine → foundation
They looked for splatter marks.
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They → look → marks
A tornado generates significant uplift, throwing dirt and debris everywhere; the more common downburst, a powerful column of sinking air, pushes outward rather than upward, leaving no such signature.
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downburst → generate → signature
They surveyed the field of damage trying to determine if it was wide and in the same direction like a downburst or narrow and convergent like a tornado.
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it → survey → tornado
They photographed everything and fed their observations into a program on an iPad, ranking the destruction of Murray’s property a 6 out of 8 and concluding the wind speed had likely been 130 km/h.
The final report would be done back at the lab with the ultimate goal of determining whether a tornado actually touched down and assigning a rating on the Enhanced Fujita scale, a measure of wind intensity similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes but with a key difference being that it’s damage-based and requiring humans trained in forensic assessment to, as Miller put it, “work backwards” from the wreckage.
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Miller → photograph → wreckage
Since the internship program began, the most catastrophic events recorded have been the derecho — a long-lived, fast-moving straight-line band of thunderstorms — that swept through Ontario and Quebec in May 2022 killing 16 people and the EF4 tornado, with a wind speed of 275 km/h, that hit Didsbury, Alta., the next year.
uncertain
that → begin → Didsbury
“The biggest misconception is that Canada doesn’t receive that many tornadoes,” said Miller, adding it’s second in the world to the U.S.
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it → receive → U.S.
Back in June, when Miller first spoke to the Star, he said 2026 was looking relatively quiet.
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2026 → speak → Star
It started off slow, but it’s really picked up,” he admitted the day after the Sept. 2 storm.
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he → start → storm
This could be “one of the busiest seasons since we started the Northern Tornadoes Project in 2017.”
uncertain
we → start → 2017
The relentless pace takes a toll.
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pace → take → toll
There is a duality to the work, said Miller, in that such weather events are necessary to advance research but no one wants a tornado to occur.
asserted
tornado → be → research
…and 13 more, not listed.
