2021 proved to be a busy year for tornado activity across the country.
Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) announced on Monday that it verified a whopping 100 twisters in Canada last year. That is 23 more than was recorded in 2020 and represents a 170 per cent jump in the verified count of tornadoes in Canada.
“We are detecting and documenting many tornadoes now that would have been missed in the past, and therefore getting a much clearer picture of the tornado climatology of the country, and the tornado risk in each region,” said NTP research lead Gregory Kopp. “Canadians also need better predictions for these events, particularly for public alerting, and our investigations are an important part of achieving that goal.”
Western and ImpactWX partnered in 2017 to form the Northern Tornadoes Project with the goal of better detecting tornadoes in Canada, improving severe and extreme weather predictions, mitigating against harm to people and property, and investigating future climate change threats. Since then the team of researchers have been able to acquire more industry-defining drone technology which captures higher quality images and video of possible tornado damage. It has also branched out to launch the new Northern Hail Project (NHP) which will begin documenting the frozen phenomenon starting this summer.
In total last year, NTP investigated 400 severe weather events, conducting 340 planet satellite surveys, 52 ground surveys, 48 drone surveys and 18 aircraft surveys to confirm the 100 tornados.
It also began collaborating with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, Instant Weather, and CatIQ. That is in addition to work with The Weather Network, University of Manitoba and York University, and Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“Teaming with researchers, industry partners and citizen scientists across Canada allows NTP greater access, greater coverage and most importantly, greater results,” NTP Executive Director Davis Sills, said in a statement. “Last year was bigger and better than 2020, and we expect even more investigations in 2022 as the team grows and the pandemic protocols, hopefully, continue to lift.”
To view the NTP annual report for 2021 click here.
