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18.2 km: Track of Ontario tornado is third

AI News July 06, 2026 03:07 AM
18.2 km: Track of Ontario tornado is third

Ontario's recent bout of severe weather has yielded two more tornadoes to its 2026 count.

According to the Northern Tornadoes Project, two weak tornadoes occurred in eastern Ontario on Tuesday, June 30. The tornadoes formed under a mesovortex along the leading edge of a bow-echo thunderstorm that moved southeast, stretching from the Verona area, Ont., to Kingston, Ont.

The twisters were verified near Verona and Kingston, Ont., earning preliminary damage ratings of EF-1 and EF-0, respectively.

The Verona tornado is noteworthy as it holds Canada's third-longest track length for a twister this year (18.2 kilometres). It had a maximum wind speed of 150 km/h and a maximum damage path width of 510 metres.

The tornado that holds the longest track length in Canada this year, so far, is the damaging, EF-3 rated twister near Oxbow, Sask., on Tuesday, June 9. It is Canada's strongest since a twister near Didsbury, Alta., in July 2023. Its track length was 32 kilometres.

The tornado with the second-longest track so far this year? A twister that occurred near London-Lambeth, Ont. on Tuesday, May 19 (26.2 km).

Convergent treefall along the damage path of the Verona, Ont., EF-1 tornado on June 30, 2026. (Northern Tornadoes Project)

Canada's longest-tracked tornado: The Grand Valley-Tottenham twister, F4-rated, that occurred on May 31, 1985. It had a track length of 115 km.

And the world's longest-tracked tornado is the 1925 Tri-State twister (352 km)--about the distance from Windsor to Toronto, Ont., or a 3.5-hour trek.

Thumbnail courtesy of the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP), taken near Verona, Ont.

With files from Tyler Hamilton, a meteorologist at The Weather Network, and Nathan Howes, a digital reporter at The Weather Network.