More severe weather after four tornadoes confirmed in the northeastern Ont. storm two weeks ago

Sudbury -

Northern Tornadoes Project is following up on the impacts of Wednesday night's severe storm in the northeast and has confirmed four tornadoes during a storm two weeks ago.

Another severe storm rolled into northeastern Ontario on Wednesday evening around 8 p.m. and a tornado warning was issued for a short time in the Kirkland Lake/Englehart area.

David Sills, the executive director of Northern Tornadoes Project, said some photos and videos his team reviewed "depict a strong supercell thunderstorm with a rotating wall cloud, but not a tornado."

Just last week, Sills' team confirmed four tornadoes occurred on Aug. 11 between Sault Ste. Marie and Elliot Lake north of Highway 17. Three of those have been classified with EF2 damage ratings and one tornado received an EF1 damage rating in Urquhart Lake.

As the Aug. 11 storm moved east from Lake Superior, the first tornado, an EF2, was detected at 4:30 p.m. in Dunn Valley causing damage to a heavily treed area with an estimated maximum wind speed of 190 km/h. The track length was nearly 10 kilometres and the width of the path was 830 metres at its widest.

Five minutes later, the 'over land' tornado was detected in Urquhart Lake with a maximum wind speed of 170 km/h. The damage rating has been classified as EF1 with a track length was more than 9 kilometres and maximum width of the path was 750 metres. The tornado's motion was from the west-northwest at approximately 290 degrees and continued east.

At 4:45 p.m. another EF2 tornado hit Kynoch with wind speeds reaching up to 190 km/h, track length 8.41 km and a maximum path width of 780 metres.

Finally, at 4:50 p.m another EF2 tornado reached Blinko Lake. Its track length was less than half of the previous one with a maximum path width of 430 metres.

Six other events from that same storm are currently under investigation and could possibly be later classified as tornadoes as well. One event took place on Richard's Landing on St. Joseph Island, where a resident recorded video of a possible funnel cloud. Other locations include Basswood Lake in Huron Shores, Franklin Lake, Mather's Lake, Elliot Lake, and Campover Lake.

The project began in 2017 as a partnership between Western University in London, Ont. and ImpactWX, a Toronto-based social impact fund. Its goal is to "better detect tornado occurrence throughout Canada, improve severe and extreme weather understanding and prediction, mitigate against harm to people and property, and investigate future implications due to climate change."

Classification of 20 tornadoes has been finalized in Ontario so far this summer with two preliminary classifications and 10 events under investigation, including the six in the north.