Canada’s Tornado History Digitized in Online Archive Dating Back to 1700s

A man looks at the damage in Très-Saint-Rédempteur, Que., on May 28, 2024, after a tornado went through the prior evening. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz

A history of tornadoes that have hit Canada for more than the past 200 years is now available to the public through a digitization project.

The Michael Newark Digitized Tornado Archive includes news clippings, photographs, investigation reports, and analysis that date back to Canada’s first recorded tornado in the Niagara region in 1792.

“A probable destructive tornado tracked through the Fonthill area, leaving behind a path of uprooted and broken trees which was cleared and later became known as ‘Hurricane Road.’ This road still exists today,” the archive page says of the event.

The project is named after a former meteorologist who spent a decade researching the topic of tornadoes in Canada.

The archive was officially launched on July 25 by the Northern Tornadoes Project—a partnership with Western University—and Western Libraries.

Records from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) make up some of the digitized archive. The physical files are being kept by ECCC, according to the archive website.

The publicly available information will be invaluable for meteorologists, emergency planners, insurers, and researchers, according to Western University, and can help improve understanding of tornado risks as well as forecasting and preparedness.

“This project is especially important from an access standpoint,” said Western Libraries assistant Arielle VanderSchans, who worked on the project. “The digitized files are not only preserved but are openly available for anyone to access on a platform that’s easy for users to navigate.”

The archive “draws a direct line between past and present approaches to tornado research by providing invaluable historical context that compliments the ongoing work of the Northern Tornadoes Project,” she said.

Ontario tornado information has been uploaded, and work is underway to digitize other provinces’ records, the archive website says.

Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Northern Tornadoes Project have been able to update historical records after finding new information, the archive website says. As a result, information in the new digital archive “may not match those in the latest EC and NTP tornado databases.”

Michael Newark’s Life Work

Newark worked as a meteorologist with ECCC from 1959 until retiring in 1991.

He created the archive after being asked questions about a tornado that hit Windsor in 1974 and not knowing the answers. Newark expected to be able to find a published record, but discovered that “very little was known about tornadoes in Canada,” the archive website says.

For the next 10 years, he dedicated his time to researching the topic, and compiling the records that are included in the archive.

He was made an honorary fellow of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society in 2019.