Strong storms that moved across parts of Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent Wednesday have left behind quite a mess, but Environment Canada said a tornado was unlikely the cause.
The weather agency issued a severe thunderstorm watch for most of southwestern Ontario including Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent, Sarnia-Lambton, London-Middlesex, Elgin County, and Oxford County early Wednesday afternoon.
Many residents outside of Windsor and in the Chatham area experienced intermittent power outages, had large debris blow into their yards and some property sustained significant damage as a result of the storms.
While the damage in some areas was severe, Environment Canada Meteorologist Gerald Cheng told Blackburn News a tornado was not likely the culprit.
"There have been no reports of funnel clouds or tornadoes, but we did have some huge wind speeds that were reported from various airports, namely at the Windsor airport," Cheng said. "Not only that, but across Lake St. Clair winds of 120 kilometres per hour were reported there as well."
Cheng added that wind gusts up to 89 km/h were logged late Wednesday afternoon in Windsor, while gusts up to 94 km/h were felt in parts of Chatham-Kent.
Weather alerts were briefly upgraded to warnings for some areas where strong storm cells barrelled through. By 6:30 p.m., the warnings were lifted and replaced with watches again. Cheng said the storms are beginning to lose strength and are breaking apart as they move west.
"Right now it seems like it's just damaging winds [that's left], not to say that it's not serious, but the storms have moved on from at least the southwest."
Conditions remain favourable for severe weather to develop while a heat warning is still in effect for the majority of southern Ontario. The storm watches are expected to be lifted later Wednesday evening.
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