Tornado touches down in Clarington

KENDAL -- It looks a lot like a tornado touched down at Kim Jobe and Ross Dalgleish's north Clarington farm -- likely because one did.

Environment Canada confirmed Tuesday afternoon what a trip to the north Clarington farm made abundantly clear: "The storm-damage team did see damage related to a F-1 tornado," said meteorologist Sarah Wong.

According to Environment Canada's website, tornadoes are measured on the Fujita Scale, ranging from F-0 to the "inconceivable" F-6, with an F1 considered moderate. Winds during an F1 are generally between 120 and 170 kilometres per hour, Ms. Wong said.

Tornado damage was evident for about eight kilometres, largely southeast of Orono. That's a "good length" tornado, Ms. Wong said.

Mr. Dalgleish went out for just an hour around lunch-time Monday and when he turned into the long laneway of his Walsh Road farm, he knew something wasn't quite right, but "I couldn't put my finger on it."

As he crested the hill, moving toward his farmhouse, "I thought, OK, there's something really wrong here."

As far as the eye can see on the 100-plus acres Mr. Dalgleish and Ms. Jobe share, barn board and corrugated steel is strewn. A garage was pulled from secure six-by-six-inch moorings and bits of it can be seen for hundreds of metres on the farm, which is located in the rolling hills north of Newcastle.

The storm hit two years to the day after Ms. Jobe and Mr. Dalgleish closed the deal to buy the farm. There's always a breeze up there, they say, but nothing like what must have hit while Mr. Dalgleish made a quick trip to Millbrook Monday.

As soon as he parked in the driveway, he called Ms. Jobe at work.

"He knows not to call me at work unless it's an emergency," Ms. Jobe said. "He said, you better come home; we have no barns left."

At first, she thought he must be exaggerating. He wasn't.

The first really noticeable sign is that the mailbox along Walsh Road is missing.

"We haven't found it yet," Ms. Jobe said.

The television antenna was shorn at the height of the raised bungalow farmhouse and patio furniture is strewn about -- some, it appears, in the "swirly pattern" Ms. Wong said weather experts look for as part of evidence in determining if a storm is, indeed, a tornado.

Other signs investigators used in determining it was a tornado include the fact one of the farm's cement foundations is pulled up and shifted in a way that "indicated rotation," Ms. Wong said.

"Our storm damage team did say there was quite a bit of debris thrown quite a far way."

Even before confirmation from Environment Canada's investigators, Ms. Jobe was quite certain it was no regular storm that caused the wreckage.

"It had to be," she said as she surveyed the damage, pointing to the way the winds seem to have gone around the house, causing very little damage, while downing a barn which had, until Monday, stood the test of the best part of eight decades.

"We've seen some pretty wicked winds up here," she said. "There's no way this (damage) is from ordinary wind."

She pointed hundreds of metres into a field, where a lone round bale of hay sat.

"It took that bale of hay out of the barn and dropped it about 500 or 1,000 feet down there," she said. "Those bales weigh 400 to 500 pounds."

Despite the massive damage to their property, they are counting their blessings. All their livestock -- including 30 cows and calves, three horses and a donkey -- made it through alive, if a mite "skittish," Mr. Dalgleish said.

"At least nobody got hurt; that's the main thing," he said. "And it's early enough that we should be able to get some shelter up (for the animals) before winter."

Representatives from the pair's insurance company have visited but, as yet, no damage estimate has been set. All Ms. Jobe and Mr. Dalgleish can do now is attempt to start the cleanup. The question is, how to do it and where to begin.

"One board at a time," Mr. Dalgleish said. "Pick a spot and start."