fallen tree

Around mid-day on May 21, dark clouds eclipsed Ontario skies, unleashing torrential rain and howling winds. In its wake, it left behind fallen trees, damaged homes, and widespread power outages. The culprit is what experts call a derecho storm.

Derecho, a Spanish word meaning straight ahead, is a long-lasting, fast-moving thunderstorm that can unleash winds as fast as a tornado. Unlike a tornado, a derecho’s winds don’t spiral. Instead, they blow in a straight path.

“When it becomes extreme, the wind speeds start to exceed 100 to 110 kilometres an hour, and they last for 600 kilometres or more,” explained Peter Kimbell, an Environment Canada meteorologist. Derechos are caused by the downdrafts from thunderstorms. This particular storm was caused by a heat dome over the eastern U.S.

Kitchener recorded the highest measured wind speeds at 132 kilometres per hour, but Kimbell says it’s likely winds reached even higher speeds in areas where there weren’t measuring devices.

After analysing data collected during the storm, the Northern Tornado Project (NTP), a research group based out of Western University, hypothesized that the worst-hit areas appeared to be Ottawa, Uxbridge, and London. Based on the group’s data, the NTP says it believes wind speeds reached 190 kilometres per hour in Ottawa, creating a five-kilometre-wide path of intense damage.

Both Uxbridge and London experienced tornadoes, according to the NTP. In Uxbridge, the tornado touched down around 1:15 p.m., travelling 4.26 kilometres and reaching a max wind speed of 195 kilometres per hour. The rooves of two apartment buildings were torn off.

In London, two tornadoes touched down. The first occurred at 11:36 a.m., travelling 5.6 kilometres through the northeast section of the city, reaching a max wind speed of 160 kilometres per hour, damaging an airport hangar door and flipping over a plane. The second tornado touched down in the south section of the city at 11:39 a.m., travelling 3.4 kilometres and reaching a max wind speed of 175 kilometres per hour.

And this is only what’s been recorded so far, Kimbell says. “Undoubtedly, there is damage elsewhere in cottage country that probably was equivalent, or maybe even greater, but we don’t know because we haven’t been there to find out.”

More pictures from London Airport #ONStorm pic.twitter.com/KviSyTDkpA

— Paul Colyn (@flyingdutchwx) May 21, 2022

The storm left over 650,000 Ontario residents without power, according to Hydro One. In a statement released on Thursday, the company said that it “anticipates power will be restored to 99 per cent of customers affected by the storm by Friday evening. Due to the severity of damage, some customers in rural, remote, and island locations in the Perth and Bancroft areas will be without power for several more days. In the Tweed area, a small number of customers may be without power for several more weeks due to the extraordinary level of damage.”

The storm took down 1,900 hydro poles, broke 300 hydro pole cross arms, and damaged 200 transformers. Hydro One has 3,200 people working to repair the necessary infrastructure, including out-of-province and international contractors.

“When rebuilding after a storm, Hydro One prioritizes restoration to bring power back to the greatest number of customers in the shortest period of time. Crews need to repair and rebuild main power lines along with other key pieces of infrastructure before repairs can be made to power lines that serve a smaller numbers of customers,” the company said.

Right before the storm hit, Environment and Climate Change Canada broadcasted a severe thunderstorm warning to people’s cellphones across Ontario. According to ECCC, to warrant a wireless alert, there either needs to be a tornado warning or a thunderstorm exhibiting wind gusts of 130 kilometres per hour or greater, or baseball-sized hail (seven centimetres) or greater.

This was the first derecho to hit Ontario since 1999. While Kimbell says he can’t speak to whether climate change will increase the frequency of this type of event, he does point out that there has been no increase in thunderstorms, which cause derechos, across the country in the last 20 years. “We do get these nasty events every now and then. But we don’t see an increase of thunderstorm activity so far.”

The May 21 windstorm that ripped through Ontario left thousands across the province without power. Peterborough was one of the hardest-hit cities with trees collapsing on people’s houses, cottages, powerlines, and blocking roads. The overwhelming number of fallen trees has left local arborists scrambling to keep up with requests.

“We’ve had over 300 calls since Saturday afternoon,” says Katherine Tillaart, manager of Van Till Tree Care. “We don’t even have a full picture of how much more we’re going to have because the calls have not stopped. I thought within a few days, we would have at least heard from all of the most urgent calls such as trees on houses, but they’re still coming in.”

Peterborough Mayor Diane Therrien declared a local state of emergency on May 24, and provided the city with extra funding to tackle the backlog of damages on public property, such as trees blocking streets and sidewalks, and downed powerlines. But rather than city crews, residential and cottage owners have to rely on private tree removal services to clear any fallen trees from their properties.

Most arborists in the area are prioritizing emergency situations, such as trees that have fallen on someone’s home or on wires, leaving non-emergency situations, such as clean up, for a later date. According to Mike Crough, president of Treescape Certified Arborists, it’ll be about a month before his company’s able to get to non-emergency calls.

The long waitlist is due, in part, to the surge in demand, but also the tricky and time-consuming nature of some of the jobs. “It all depends on the tree,” Crough says. Bigger trees in more precarious situations, such as resting on someone’s roof or leaning against a wire, will take longer to remove. “Some jobs we have might take a half an hour or some jobs we have might take the full day and require a whole bunch of different equipment.”

For emergencies such as a fallen tree on a wire, Crough says you should make sure the tree removal service you’ve hired is trained and licensed to work around primary hydro and that it’s using dielectric equipment.

If you’re not in an emergency situation and feel it’s safe to dispose of a fallen tree yourself, Crough says City of Peterborough residents can cut up the tree and leave the wood out by their driveway to be picked up by a disaster relief truck. He recommends cutting the wood into smaller pieces so that the truck’s grapple can grab the wood and place it in the back of the truck.

If you’re in a rural area surrounding Peterborough, Crough recommends leaving the wood in longer pieces—just long enough that you can still carry it. Line the pieces of wood up along the roadside with the butts facing downstream of traffic. This makes it easier for a truck with a chipper to pull up and feed each piece individually into the chipper.

If you’re not comfortable removing the tree yourself and want to use a professional service, Tillaart suggests putting your name on several tree removal services’ lists. Just remember to cancel with the other companies once you’ve been serviced, she says.

Alternatively, if you’re dealing with an uprooted tree that’s damaged your lawn, you could try contacting a landscaping or excavating company. “They won’t be quite as bombarded as the tree companies right now,” Tillaart says. “And those stumps need to be dug up with a big excavator and taken away.”

If you do decide to hire a tree removal service, Tillaart asks for patience. “This has been really hard to work through for everybody in the industry. And we know people are dealing with it, living with a tree on their house and without power and not knowing when someone’s coming to help. People have been, for the most part, so incredibly patient,” she says. “It’s nice to see when it’s such an awful time for so many people.”