Ottawa was hit by a severe thunderstorm on the afternoon of May 21, 2022. The wind and rain made so much noise you really couldn't hear the thunder.
The storm originated Michigan, blew through Southern Ontario, up to Ottawa and passed into Quebec where it apparently ran out of steam near Quebec City.
The fury lasted maybe 10-15 minutes, but the darkness and after rain for another 30 minutes or so.
In our immediate area one house lost a large corner of its front roof and most of the shingles and some plywood off the back roof. Others lost a few shingles, fascia trim and tree branches. (Two trees were uprooted.)
A small subdivision to the south of us had a fair number of evergreen trees blown over and limited shingle damage. But the next area of housing south, an area of older and new houses seemed to fair far worse. One block in particular had a good number of houses with roof severe damage and lots of trees down or broken. Hydro wires were down on the road in several places. Weather experts looked at the area and estimated a wind gust of 190kph.
An OCTranspo bus had been abandoned after being trapped by falling trees in front of it and behind it.
Three hydro transmission towers toppled a few kilometres east of us.
We lost power for a split second, but the areas to the south, and the many stoplights, were without power, and likely won't be back for a good while.
(A week after the storm most traffic lights were back, a few were being operated by portable generators, and some just weren't working yet. Ten days after the storm 8,000 houses were without power still.)
Short video of the storm.
The video must have been picked up by some website as it had over 500 views within a few hours of posting, and over 7,000 two days later, after a week it had had 11,000.
The weather office defined the storm as a "derecho".
A derecho is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system. Derechos can cause hurricanic or tornadic-force winds, actual tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash floods.
Hydro outages
(The storm hit at about 3:45pm on May 21)
Western University Northern Tornadoes Project Annotated Map
(Twitter post did not show grid markings so no idea where EF1 and EF2 are)
News stories excerpts
Centre: mid-week, Right: one week later
Two areas immediately south of us
Hunt Club Road - three 40' spruce trees down
Upper Hunt Club
Upper Hunt Club
Kingsdale Ave
Kingsdale Ave
Kingsdale Ave
Kingsdale Ave
Kingsdale Ave
Eighth Street (?)
Sixth St/Russel Boyd Park
Sixth St/Russel Boyd Park
Eureka St (?)
Kingsdale Ave
A few shots from the pathway system behind us that had been given a quick clean up two days after the storm but is still blocked in one spot 10 days later. The tree in the last picture is in the same spot a tree came down during the 2018 tornado.
UPDATE June 28. 5 weeks later:
The City has spent the last three days clearing up the fallen trees shown below.
The City has spent the last three days clearing up the fallen trees shown below.
A few days after the storm I visited a 200 acre maple sugar tree forest about an hour west of the city. While there were certainly trees down, particularly in one area, it was not nearly as bad I thought it might have been.
June 28th: There are still many trees that have not been dealt with along city streets as well as debris waiting to be picked up. A nearby golf course lost over 1,000 trees. One traffic lane was closed on the weekend as their tree service brought in a crane to deal with large trees down along the street. Large trees were seen being brought in as replacements for some of the ones lost.
The National Capital Commission (NCC) that owns much of the forested parkland in Ottawa, and Gatineau on the Quebec side, has been working full tilt to clean-up the damage. Here is the June 28th map showing the extent of the trails still closed, marked in purple.
August 28, 2022 new story about clean up in the NCC Greenbelt, particularly Conroy Pit.
Update September 25,2022
The Pine Grove Trail was recently re-opened to visitors five months after the storm. Parts of it looked the same, but others are so devastated that we didn't recognize the area at all. The areas in the first three pictures used to be solid forest.
But nature is at work already with new growth benefiting from the opened canopy. But it will be a many year recovery.
