The storm system that ravaged a swath of Ontario Thursday began its unravelling in the Sarnia and Windsor areas and built momentum as it moved eastward.
Just before 4 p.m., trees started shaking at Jon Eckhardt's farm in the Town of Durham. "The trees started rocking and the top of the house blew off first," he told The Sun Times newspaper in Owen Sound. "I saw the trees starting to fly down and ran for the basement and then when I came up, the barn was gone."
Buoyed by a warm and humid air mass sitting over the southwestern and south-central parts of the province, the storm blew eastward toward the Blue Mountain town of Craigleith, between Thornbury and Collingwood. "It was a large funnel cloud, coming over the top of the mountain and then touching down ... shearing off the tops of homes," said OPP Sergeant Chris Maecker.
Next, a twister vaulted across Georgian Bay and into the cottage community of Gravenhurst, causing more damage.
South of cottage country, in Newmarket and the suburban City of Vaughan, another twister spent the dinner hour ripping the roofs off houses and causing widespread damage and terror.
There were unconfirmed reports of tornadoes in Lake Nipissing and Bracebridge.