I lamented to Charlene the other day that we hadn’t had a good storm in a while. I have always loved storms. The bigger, the better. Storms, when I was younger, seemed to last longer and were more intense. Today’s storms are just fast and furious; all bang with little buck.
On the rare occasion when a storm would be notable, it always seemed to happen at night, and because of that, I would sleep through it. Storms always give me the best night’s sleep and I wake up regretting that I missed out.
We decided to go camping. It was the first time in a while that we included my mother on a trip. At other times, we brought her camping, I have a much larger tent, but because of my bad back, I decided to use our standard tent and our spare tent for Mom because the big tent takes an hour to set up, but using two tents, I can have that all set up, make dinner and be finished eating in the same timeframe. Mom was impressed by how fast we set up our site.
Whenever I arrive at a campsite, I always check the weather. If there is no wind or rain, I rarely stake down the tent. It makes setup and take down so much quicker, but because we were going to be there for the entire weekend, I always stake everything down for those “just in case” moments.
Little did I know that “just in case” moment would happen that very night.
In the evening, we roasted some marshmallows, watched the campfire slowly consume the wood and finally retired after a day of hiking. I was nice and comfortable in our tent, while Mom was in her own tent. She was nervous at first being by herself, but she enjoyed having her own space and also having our spare tent, which had never been used. After our disaster at Writing-On-Stone, I always have a spare tent with us.
Sleeping nicely, I am woken by a near-frantic wife. We were in the middle of an intense storm, and I was missing it because I always sleep through the storms. Within the first second of being woken, I appreciated that Charlene wanted me up to share in this experience that I would have otherwise missed.
Within the second second, I wondered if this was a tornado.
The sound was unmistakable and very intense. There was a constant rumble, like that of a nearby freight train that happened to be overhead of our tent. Although we have never been this close to a tornado, my first thought was that we were hearing a tornado.
I was still lying in our bed, staring at the ceiling in the tent. I have no need to turn on a light because the lightning is flashing as fast as a strobe light in a disco. Despite the extremely intense downpour of rain, the tent was barely moving. I would roll off the bed to look outside and see that the rain was coming straight down.
The tent was calm, and the rain was straight, and it looked like the trees were not moving; this could not be a tornado. No, it is not. It must be constant thunder and lightning. I was pleased with my meteorological assessment and relieved that we were not in a tornadic situation. But there was something weird – we were floating.
The tent, along with all its contents, including Charlene and me, was floating on about six inches of water. There was so much rain falling that the ground could not absorb it fast enough, and it was like we were on a waterbed. Honestly, I was impressed with this situation. I was also thankful that I had staked our tents down because if I hadn’t, who knows how far away we would have floated.
Standing on my knees on the floor of our tent, I looked around for any water coming in. There was only a tiny bit of moisture, and the tent was resisting any more water from entering. I was even more thankful that we used this tent instead of the larger one because the main door zipper of the larger one was right to the ground, and water would have been pouring in, creating a huge disaster. Our Coleman tent has a six-inch lip, and it was keeping everything dry.
Thankfully, we had cell phone reception, and I loaded the weather radar map. I saw a massive red blob. I have never seen a red blob of this size before. Even though Charlene and I were in the same tent, I would have to shout over the rain, the thunder and the constant roar of what would later be confirmed to be a tornado. The radar map would update every 10 minutes, and it was clear that this slow-moving rain event would last for a long while.
It was well over an hour of intense rain. The constant lightning eased, and we stopped hearing the continuous roar. The rain continued to drown out any sound. Even though Mom’s tent was just feet away, we couldn’t communicate with her at all.
Finally, the red blob on the radar map moved away from us, and the rain eased to a more normal, calm and comforting level. We could now call out to Mom and check in on her. She was fine. She had no concerns. She had been calm the entire time. Her tent remained dry, ours, on the other hand, now had some water inside because of a small hole on the floor. I figured one bath towel would be enough to clean it up.
Assured that everyone was physically okay, that our tents were still holding up, and that we could see no damage to the trees where we were, we decided to go back to sleep. Rolling onto the mattress was interesting because there was still a lot of water under us, and we floated until we fell asleep.
This was our closest time to a tornado. As children, there was a devastating tornado that ripped through the province, destroying Grand Valley, a small section north of Orangeville and a sizeable piece of Barrie, and it took several lives as well. I was in Kmart, looking out the window, and noticed how dark and green the sky was, along with the intensity of the rain, when the tornado was only a little north of where I was.
My second tornado was in Kitchener. I was outside doing a side job of delivering newspapers when the sky turned an unmistakable green. I continued my job and was unaffected by the tornado that spawned that day, although it did minor damage.
The first tornado that we both saw was on August 16, 2020. After taking Charlene amythst mining, she developed a new love of looking for rocks. We were touring the shoreline of Lake Huron when we arrived at Point Clarke. There is a large, beautiful lighthouse, and after admiring it for a moment, we strolled to the beach. Charlene and I were looking for whatever gems we could find that might have washed ashore. I looked to the horizon and noticed a cloud. “Gee, that looks a lot like a funnel cloud,” I said to myself. Every other time I saw a funnel cloud, it did nothing. Ignoring it, I continued to scour the beach.
I casually looked up and to my surprise, there was a tornado in the water. I could barely speak, but ultimately I did scream out, “TORNADO!” I was almost breathless. Charlene looked up, then continued to search for rocks. It took her a few more moments to realize the situation. From our vantage point, it looked stationary, and it remained in the water the entire time. I was thankful to witness a tornado, and even more grateful that I did not witness the terrible destruction that tornadoes can cause.
When we woke, at the campsite where we had experienced a close call with a tornado, we would continue exploring the area. There was no damage to the campground we were at. We were inconvenienced by the power outage, and our cell service had stopped working. We appreciated the large amount of rain because it made the waterfall we visited in the morning all the more impressive.
Later, we would learn that the next campsite over had trees fall, affecting many campers, and that a provincial park north of our position had to have people rescued by plane and helicopter. We would also learn that one person died when a tree fell on their tent.
We were lucky in every sense of the word. The tornado could have touched down on top of us, trees could have fallen on us, we could have been trapped, or even seriously injured or killed. We are thankful for this unique experience, but we also counted our blessings when we learn how many others had a night that they will never forget.
