So as a lot of people might know Canada is pretty damn blessed in the fact that it doesn't get hit with many natural disasters. We aren't usually effected by hurricane's because our coasts aren't hot enough, and tectonic activity around our coasts is oddly slow -- British Columbia is kind of aside from this with the Juan de Fuca plate and the rockies, but that's an incredibly different story and I think you get the picture.
Ontario doesn't have storm centres for people to hide out in during hurricane's, or a giant break wall to block an incoming tsunami. We just have the weather network broadcasting over our phones, televisions and radios. The system actually works well -- but it only works because Canada is Canada.
On occasion, Canada does get rocked by some pretty heavy storms and tornadoes -- usually one or two storms for the entire storm though! I'd like to point out that tornadoes actually cause the highest amount of death (yes above tsunami's/hurricanes/typhoons) and that getting a Torndao to touch down is a pretty difficult process! These storms are usually accompanied by heavy winds and giant ass balls of hail -- sometimes the size of my palm!
Last night southern Ontario experienced one of the longest and largest tornado and thunderstorm ever, the actual tornado touched down just outside my home town, Uxbridge. Uxbridge is actually a little town about an hour north of Toronto. It's pretty lucky that the tornado touched down there because the population is pretty small and it's mostly just farmers field. A few buildings collapsed, a plane went through a building at a small airport, and a bunch of hydro-poles came down trapping people on the road.
Yet, considerable damage was caused all over spanning from south of Hamilton which is about a two and a half hour drive on the highway from my hometown. That's what I meant before about it being the largest, that entire area experienced the conditions from about 5pm to midnight.
The point to take away from this is that this tornado has only been classed as a F2 on the Fujita scale (the scale ranges from F0 to F5 with there only being one F5 tornado between 1985-93 and 100 F2's). In other countries where the ground isn't as stable or houses aren't build as well this could have been absolutely devastating to society. Lots of areas with tourists are hit with coastal disasters and this can lead to deaths as a mere impact of language barriers. You can definitely relate this back to privledge, in general the continent of North America is privileged because it is capable of handling these disasters unlike less fortunate countries such as Japan and Haiti.
Anyways, I'm going to attach some awesome pictures that I stole from twitter, and then I'm going to go back to studying for my final exams. Go seize the day! You can find these pictures and more by searching #onstorm
