It’s now confirmed: the storm that tore through the Laurentians on Tuesday was in fact a tornado. Though no injuries were reported, the event is raising questions about why some residents never got a warning on their phones. Harrington was hit hard on Tuesday when the sudden storm ripped through the town, but Mayor Gabrielle Parr says the most urgent issues have since been dealt with, and the cleanup is mostly over. “All the public roads and private roads are cleared to allow access,” Parr said. The Northern Tornadoes Project has now confirmed it was an EF-1 tornado. “EF1 is 135 to 175 km/h. This tornado was at the very top end of EF1,” said Dave Sills, director of the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University. The damage was widespread, with trees snapped and power lines downed. “With tornadoes, we typically see trees that are down either in a circular pattern, or they’re converging and crossing each other,” Sills said. “In this case, it was a wide path where almost all the damage was in one direction.” But the storm exposed a deeper problem: the warning system. Environment Canada sent out a tornado warning, but Harrington has long struggled with cell service. The mayor said if residents can’t get signal on a normal day, they certainly weren’t getting one when the tornado hit. “Cell access was next to zero,” Parr said. She says that’s about to change. According to the Harrington municipality, three satellite towers are expected to go up by the end of October, finally bringing service across the territory. The hope is that the next time the town is hit with severe weather, residents won’t be caught off guard.
