'Just chaos': Tornado touches down in Talbotville and narrowly misses restaurant, house
CBC
A Talbotville, Ont., family is left in shock after a tornado ripped through their property Tuesday evening, leaving a trail of damage.
Business owner Heather Aristone describes a scene of "just chaos" when she emerged from her home to find trees knocked down, patio tables thrown hundreds of feet and a 2x4 lodged in the wall of her restaurant.
"I was still in shock for a while," said Aristone.
Aristone owns Rustic Studio and London Waffle Co. northwest of St. Thomas on Sunset Drive with her husband, Jay, and lives on the property with their three children.
"We kept the kids home from school today. They're still a little shaken up," she said.
WATCH | Damage after a tornado touched down in Talbotville:
The tornado, classified under the enhanced Fujita scale as an EF-0 (the lowest level on the scale), was the first confirmed in Ontario this year. It touched down around 6:30 p.m. ET and reaching speeds of 90 to 130 km/h and 2.5 kilometres in length, said Dave Sills, executive director of the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) at Western University.
His team of survey interns were onsite with a drone Wednesday, heading later to Beachville near Woodstock to assess more damage there.
"These weak tornadoes [can] pop up unexpectedly. They tend to be brief and weak, and that's certainly what we saw yesterday," he said, adding even with weak tornadoes, debris can really injure someone.
Aristone is thankful everyone is OK, she said.
"It was just stuff that can be replaced. So I think we were very fortunate."
She said the tornado touched down in their driveway, went around the building, went into the back field and then was gone.
"Thankfully, it didn't hit the backyard, it didn't come too close to the house and all the animals are fine," she said. Once the wind stopped, she checked on their 14 new baby chicks to find they were safe.
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