‘I heard stuff hitting the house’: Area resident recalls sudden tornado

The tornado that struck Talbotville Tuesday evening was the first recorded in Ontario this year, Western University twister researchers say, a later-than-usual start to tornado season in the region.

The tornado spotted near Colonel Talbot Road, south of London, around 6:30 pm Tuesday was about as weak as they get but still enough to significantly damage buildings and trees, said David Sills, executive director of the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western.

“Some of the tell-tale signs of a tornado are missile damage. Things like boards going through walls. That certainly happened here,” Sills said Wednesday morning.

“There was a big hole in a restaurant’s front wall where a two-by-four went through and pushed a drink machine two feet inside the building. . . . It tells you the power of even a weak tornado.”

The EF0 tornado in Talbotville had wind speeds of 90 to 130 kilometers per hour, Sills said. The highest category is an EF5.

A Free Press photographer captured a shot of a towering funnel cloud near the Amazon warehouse in Talbotville around 6:30 pm Tuesday. Other reports of damage flowed in to the Northern Tornadoes Project team on social media, Sills said.

There was still enough daylight Tuesday evening for Sills to do a preliminary survey of the damage in Talbotville himself, but team members with drones will be in the area Wednesday to investigate further, he said.

Heather Aristone was inside her home with her family when the sunny sky outside changed in an instant.

“Within two seconds, with no warning, it was so loud outside. I heard stuff hitting the house. I looked and couldn’t even see outside,” Aristone said Wednesday.

“I grabbed my daughter, ran to the middle of the house and yelled to everyone to stay away from the windows. By the time I got to my oldest daughter’s bedroom, it was over.”

Once the tornado had passed, the family ventured outside and saw two large trees had fallen across their driveway. Then they walked a little further to check the damage at London Waffle Company, the restaurant they own.

“There were full, eight-foot picnic tables that were picked up and thrown across the parking lot. There was a two-by-four stuck in the wall.”

Aristone said her husband had to go searching for the front sign of the restaurant that was tossed deep into a neighboring farmer’s field. The family is cleaning up Wednesday and bringing some experts in to ensure there is no hidden structural damage to the building.

WATCH: London Waffle Bistro & Bar Instagram reel

“Everyone is safe though. Thankfully it’s all just stuff,” she said.

Members of the Northern Tornadoes Project team are also looking into a potential tornado reported in the Beachville area, near Woodstock, Sills said.

Environment Canada issued back-to-back alerts about the potential for tornadoes in the London area Tuesday afternoon and evening, a credit to the agency’s forecasting skills and a sign the system is working as it should, Sills said.

June is a late start to tornado season in Southwestern Ontario, Sills said. It’s more common to see twister-producing storms beginning in April and May in the region.

“The middle of June is a late start for us, but that’s just the weather pattern we’ve been stuck in. Not much has been happening storm-wise lately,” he said.

The Northern Tornadoes Project, which launched in 2017, analyzes reported tornadoes and searches for undetected ones in remote areas to get a full understanding of twisters in Canada.

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