Powerful winds wreak havoc in Windsor-Essex
Anything not anchored to the ground turned into a missile Wednesday as strong winds blew through Windsor and the rest of Southwestern Ontario.
Gusts measured in excess of 90 km/h toppled trees and branches, downing power lines and damaging houses and parked cars. Wind measurements are taken 10 metres off the ground, said Geoff Coulson, a meteorologist with Environment Canada. Wind gusts were certainly stronger higher up, he said.
A camping trailer crossing the Ambassador Bridge got blown over and, in one of the more dramatic incidents across southern Ontario, the wind toppled an empty transport truck crossing the Burlington Skyway.
High winds hindering efforts to right it, the toppled truck was towed away on its side.
In LaSalle, a passel of pigs got loose after a fence at a Front Road farm blew over. Police officers had to help corral the animals.
The Pelee Island Ferry was cancelled, but flights in and out of Windsor Airport were on schedule.
Environment Canada cancelled its wind warning at 8:15 p.m.
About 500 Enwin customers remained without power approaching the supper hour, said Barbara Peirce Marshall. Outages were widespread, with about 6,000 customers without power at 1 p.m. During that peak, power outages affected 1,900 customers in Polonia Park. As of 8:30 p.m. there were several small localized power outages, with more than 50 customers without power in the Pillette Road area.
Some of the outages in Windsor were caused by damage to Hydro One transmission lines. As of 8:30 p.m. Hydro One was reporting 29 individual outages in Essex County, the largest being in the Leamington-Wheatley area with 1,541 customers affected crossing into Chatham-Kent. Outages were also reported in the areas serviced by ELK Energy.
Enwin was battling falling trees and branches downing power lines and damaging eight poles.
“Our guys will be out there until all the power’s restored,” Marshall said.
Coulson said even small items such as pop cans out of recycling bins can become hazards in strong winds.
“Cars need to be careful and even pedestrians need to be aware of flying debris,” he said.
At its strongest, the wind was clocked at 91 km/h at the Windsor Airport. In Sarnia, it reached speeds of 100 km/h, Coulson said.
In Ypsilanti, Mich., a plane carrying the University of Michigan men’s basketball team aborted a takeoff attempt because of the winds and ran off the runway, damaging the plane’s nose. There were no injuries.
The windstorm comes on the heels of the warmest February on record. The average temperature last month, taking into account both daytime highs and nighttime lows, was 2.3 C. The previous record, set in 1998, was 2.2 C.
“We didn’t shatter the record, we just squeaked past it, but it’s still a record,” Coulson said. The long-term average temperature for February, calculated from data amassed over 30 years, is -2.6 C.